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In this week's episode, I take a look back at the movies and streaming shows I watched in Summer 2025. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Serpent, Book #1 in the Ghost Armor series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store: FALLSERPENT50 The coupon code is valid through September 15, 2025 (please note the shorter expiration date). So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 267 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is September 5, 2025 and today I'm doing a review roundup of the movies and streaming shows I saw in Summer 2025. Before we do that, we will have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing and audiobook projects. First up, this week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Serpent, Book One in the Ghost Armor series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store. That is FALLSERPENT50. This coupon code will be valid through September 15th, 2025 (exactly one week). So if you need a new audiobook to listen to as we head into fall, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. I am pleased to report that the rough draft of Blade of Flames, which will be the first book in my new Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series is finished. The rough draft came at about 90,000 words long, which was what I was aiming for. Next up, I will be writing a short story set as sort of a bonus in that plot line called Thunder Hammer and that will be the backstory of one of the characters in Blade of Flames. And when Blade of Flames comes out (which will hopefully be later this September), newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of Thunder Hammer. So this is an excellent time to subscribe to my newsletter. I am also 8,000 words into Cloak of Worlds. At long last, I am coming back to the Cloak Mage series after nearly a year's absence. Longtime listeners will know the reason was that I had five unfinished series and I wanted to spend the summer of 2025 finishing the unfinished ones and focusing up so I will only have three ongoing series at any given time. I'm hoping Blade of Flames will come out before the end of September and Cloak of Worlds before the end of October, and after that I will be able to return to the Rivah series at long last. In audiobook news, recording is finished on Shield of Power. That will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills and hopefully once it gets through processing and quality assurance and everything, it should be showing up on the various audiobook stores before too much longer. Hollis McCarthy is about halfway through the recording of Ghost in the Siege, which was, as you know, the last book in the Ghost Armor series that just came out. And if all goes well, the audiobook should be coming out probably in October once everything is done with recording and quality assurance and all that. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook projects. 00:02:34 Main Topic: Summer 2025 Movie/TV Roundup So without further ado, let's head into our main topic. The end of summer is nigh, which means this time for my summer movie review roundup. As is usual for the summer, I saw a lot of movies, so this will be one of the longer episodes. For some reason I ended up watching a bunch of westerns. As always, the movies are ranked from least favorite to most favorite. The grades of course are totally subjective and based on nothing more than my own opinions, impressions, and interpretations. Now on to the movies. First up is the Austin Powers trilogy, the three movies of which came out in 1997, 1999, and 2002. The Austin Powers movies came out just as the Internet really got going in terms of mass adoption, which is likewise why so many Austin Powers and Dr. Evil memes are embedded in online culture. Despite that, I had never really seen any of them all the way through. They've been on in the background on TBS or whatever quite a bit when I visited people, but I've never seen them all. But I happened upon a DVD of the trilogy for $0.25 (USD), so I decided for 25 cents I would give it a go. I would say the movies were funny, albeit not particularly good. Obviously the Austin Powers movies are a parody of the James Bond movies. The movies kind of watch like an extended series of Saturday Night Live skits, only loosely connected, like the skit is what if Dr. Evil had a son named Scott who wasn't impressed with him or another skit was what if a British agent from the ‘60s arrives in the ‘90s and experiences culture clash? What if Dr. Evil didn't understand the concept of inflation and demanded only a million dollars from the United Nations? What if Dr. Evil was actually Austin's brother and they went to school together at Spy Academy? Michael Caine was pretty great as Austin's father. Overall, funny but fairly incoherent. Overall grade: C- Next up is Horrible Bosses, a very dark and very raunchy comedy from about 14 years ago. It came out in 2011. Interestingly, this movie reflects what I think is one of the major crises of the contemporary era, frequent failures of leadership at all levels of society. In the movie Nick, Dale, and Kurt are lifelong friends living in LA and all three of them have truly horrible bosses in their place of employment, ranging from a sociopathic finance director, the company founder's cokehead son, and a boorish dentist with a tendency to sexual harassment. At the bar, they fantasize about killing their horrible bosses and then mutually decide to do something about it. Obviously, they'd all be prime suspects in the murder of their own bosses, but if they killed each other's bosses, that would allow them to establish airtight alibis. However, since Nick, Dale and Kurt are not as bright as they think they are, it all goes hilariously wrong very quickly. Bob Hope has a hilarious cameo. If the best “crude comedies” I've seen are Anchorman, Zoolander, Tropic Thunder, and Dodgeball, and the worst one was MacGruber, I'd say Horrible Bosses lands about in the middle. Overall grade: C Next up is Cowboys and Aliens, which came out in 2011. Now I almost saw this in 2011 when it came out, but I was too busy to go to the theater in July of 2011, so I finally saw it here in 2025 and I would say this was almost a great movie, like the performances were great, the concept was great, the scenery was great, the special effects were great, and the story was packed full of really interesting ideas, but somehow they just didn't coalesce. I'm not entirely sure why. I think upon reflection, it was that the movie is just too overcrowded with too many characters and too many subplots. Anyway, Daniel Craig portrays a man who wakes up with no memory in the Old West, with a mysterious bracelet locked around his wrist. He makes his way to the town of Atonement, and promptly gets arrested because he is apparently a notorious outlaw (which he doesn't remember). While he is locked in jail, space aliens attack the town. The aliens, for unknown reasons, abduct many of the townspeople, and Daniel Craig's character, who is named Jake even if he doesn't remember it, must lead the town's effort to recover their abducted citizens. Harrison's Ford has an excellent performance as this awful cattle baron who nonetheless has virtues of courage and fortitude that you can't help but admire. An excellent performance. That said, the movie was just too packed, and I thought it would work better as a novel. After I watched the movie, it turned out that it was indeed based off a graphic novel. Novels and graphic novels allow for a far more complex story than a movie, and I don't think this movie quite managed to handle the transition from a graphic novel to a film. Overall grade: C Next up is Heads of State, which came out in 2025. This was kind of a stupid movie. However, the fundamental question of any movie, shouted to the audience by Russell Crow in Gladiator is, “are you not entertained?!?” I was thoroughly entertained watching this, so entertained I actually watched it twice. Not everything has to be Shakespeare or a profound meditation on the unresolvable conflicts inherent within human nature. Anyway, John Cena plays Will Derringer, newly elected President of the United States. Idris Elba plays Sam Clark, who has now been the UK Prime Minister for the last six years. Derringer was an action star who parleyed his celebrity into elected office (in the same way Arnold Schwarzenegger did), while Clarke is an army veteran who worked his way up through the UK's political system. Needless to say, the cheerful Derringer and the grim Clarke take an immediate dislike to each other. However, they'll have to team up when Air Force One is shot down, stranding them in eastern Europe. They'll have to make their way home while evading their enemies to unravel the conspiracy that threatens world peace. So half action thriller, half buddy road trip comedy. The premise really doesn't work if you think about it too much for more than thirty seconds, but the movie was funny and I enjoyed it. Jack Quaid really stole his scenes as a crazy but hyper-competent CIA officer. Overall grade: C+ Next up, Captain America: Brave New World, which came out in 2025 and I think this movie ended up on the good side of middling. You can definitely tell it went through a lot of reshoots and retooling, and I suspect the various film industry strikes hit it like a freight train. But we ended up with a reasonably solid superhero thriller. Sam Wilson is now Captain America. He's not superhuman the way Steve Rogers was and doesn't have magic powers or anything, so he kind of fights like the Mandalorian – a very capable fighter who relies on excellent armor. Meanwhile, in the grand American political tradition of failing upward, Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, who spent years persecuting The Hulk and whose meddling caused the Avengers to disband right before Thanos attacked, has now been elected President. To Wilson's surprise, Ross reaches out and wants him to restart the Avengers. But Ross (as we know) did a lot of shady black ops stuff for years, and one of his projects is coming back to haunt him. Wilson finds himself in the middle of a shadowy conspiracy, and it's up to him to figure out what's going on before it's too late. I was amused that lifelong government apparatchik Ross wanted to restart the Avengers, because when the Avengers had their biggest victory in Avengers: Endgame, they were essentially unsanctioned vigilantes bankrolled by a rogue tech billionaire. Overall grade: B- Next up is Ironheart, which came out in 2025. I'd say Ironheart was about 40% very weird and 60% quite good. It's sort of like the modern version of Dr. Faustus. The show got some flak on the Internet from the crossfire between the usual culture war people, but the key to understanding it is to realize that Riri Williams AKA Ironheart is in fact an antihero who's tottering on the edge of becoming a full-blown supervillain. Like Tony Stark, she's a once-in-a-generation scientific talent, but while she doesn't have Stark's alcohol problems, she's emotionally unstable, immature, ruthless, indifferent to collateral damage and consequences, and suffering from severe PTSD after her best friend and stepfather were killed in a drive-by shooting. This volatile mix gets her thrown out of MIT after her experiments cause too much destruction, and she has to go home to Chicago. To get the funds to keep working on her Iron Man armor, she turns to crime, and falls in with a gang of high-end thieves led by a mysterious figure named Hood. It turns out that Hood has actual magic powers, which both disturbs and fascinates Riri. However, Hood got his magic in a pact with a mysterious dark force. When a job goes bad, Riri gains the enmity of Hood and has to go on the run. It also turns out Hood's dark master has become very interested in Riri, which might be a lot more dangerous for everyone in the long run. Overall, I'd say this is about in the same vein as Agatha All Along, an interesting show constructed around a very morally questionable protagonist. Overall grade: B Next up is A Minecraft movie, which came out in 2024. I have to admit, I've never actually played Minecraft, so I know very little about the game and its ecosystem, only what I've generally absorbed by glancing at the news. That said, I think the movie held together quite well, and wasn't deserving of the general disdain it got in the press. (No doubt the $950 million box office compensated for any hurt feelings.) One of the many downsides of rapid technological change in the last fifty years is that the Boomers and Gen X and the Millennials and Gen Z and Gen Alpha have had such radically different formative experiences in childhood that it's harder to relate to each other. Growing up in the 1980s was a wildly different experience than growing up in the 2010s, and growing up in the 2010s was an even more wildly different experience than growing up in the 1960s. Smartphones and social media were dominant in 2020, barely starting in 2010, and implausible science fiction in 2000 and earlier, and so it was like the different generations grew up on different planets, because in some sense they actually did. (A five-year-old relative of mine just started school, and the descriptions of his school compared to what I remember of school really do sound like different planets entirely.) The Minecraft game and A Minecraft Movie might be one of those generation-locked experiences. Anyway, this has gotten very deep digression for what was essentially a portal-based LitRPG movie. A group of people experiencing various life difficulties in a rural Idaho town get sucked into the Minecraft world through a magic portal. There they must combine forces and learn to work together to master the Minecraft world to save it from an evil sorceress. As always, the fundamental question of any movie is the one that Russell Crowe's character shouted to the audience in Gladiator back in 2000. “Are you not entertained?” I admit I was entertained when watching A Minecraft Movie since it was funny and I recognized a lot of the video game mechanics, even though I've never actually played Minecraft. Like, Castlevania II had a night/day cycle the way Minecraft does, and Castlevania II was forty years ago. But that was another digression! I did enjoy A Minecraft Movie. It was kind of crazy, but it committed to the craziness and maintained a consistent creative vision, and I was entertained. Though I did think it was impressive how Jack Black's agent managed to insist that he sing several different times. Overall grade: B Next up is Back to School, which came out in 1986 and this is one of the better ‘80s comedies I've seen. Rodney Dangerfield plays Thornton Melon, who never went to college and is the wealthy owner of a chain of plus-sized clothing stores. His son Jason is attending Great Lakes University, and after Thornton's unfaithful gold-digging wife leaves him (Thornton is mostly relieved by this development), he decides to go visit his son. He quickly discovers that Jason is flailing at college, and decides to enroll to help out his son. Wacky adventures ensue! I quite enjoyed this. The fictional “Great Lakes University” was largely shot at UW-Madison in Wisconsin, which I found amusing because I spent a lot of time at UW-Madison several decades ago as a temporary IT employee. I liked seeing the characters walk past a place where I'd eat lunch outside when the day was nice, that kind of thing. Also, I'm very familiar with how the sausage gets made in higher ed. There's a scene where the dean is asking why Thornton is qualified to enter college, and then it cuts to the dean cheerfully overseeing the groundbreaking of the new Thornton Melon Hall which Thornton just donated, and I laughed so hard I almost hurt myself, because that is exactly how higher ed works. The movie had some pointless nudity, but it was only a few seconds and no doubt gets cut in network broadcasts. Overall grade: B Next up is Whiskey Galore, which came out in 1949 and this is a comedy set in Scotland during World War II. The villagers living on an isolated island have no whiskey due to wartime rationing. However, when a government ship carrying 50,000 cases of whiskey runs aground near the island, wacky hijinks ensue. I have to admit the first half of the movie was very slow and deliberate, gradually setting up all the pieces for later. Then, once the shipwreck happens, things pick up and the movie gets much funnier. Definitely worth watching both as a good comedy movie and an artifact of its time. A modicum of historical knowledge is required – if you don't know what the Home Guard is, you might have to do some Googling to understand the context of some of the scenes. Regrettably, the version I watched did not have captioning, so I had to pay really close attention to understand what the characters were saying, because some of the accents were very strong. Overall grade: B Next up is Happy Gilmore 2, which came out in 2025. This was dumb and overstuffed with celebrity cameos but thoroughly hilarious and I say this even though it uses one of my least favorite story tropes, namely “hero of previous movie is now a middle age loser.” However, the movie leads into it for comedy. When Happy Gilmore accidentally kills his wife with a line drive, he spirals into alcoholism and despair. But his five children still love him, and when his talented daughter needs tuition for school, Happy attempts to shake off his despair and go back to golf to win the money. But Happy soon stumbles onto a sinister conspiracy led by an evil CEO to transform the game of golf into his own personal profit center. Happy must team up with his old nemesis Shooter McGavin to save golf itself from the evil CEO. Amusingly, as I've said before, the best Adam Sandler movies are almost medieval. In medieval fables, it was common for a clever peasant to outwit pompous lords, corrupt priests, and greedy merchants. The best Adam Sandler protagonist remains an everyman who outwits the modern equivalent of pompous lords and corrupt priests, in this case an evil CEO. Overall grade: B+ Next up is Superman, which came out in 2025 and I thought this was pretty good and very funny at times. I think it caught the essential nature of Superman. Like, Superman should be a Lawful Good character. If he was a Dungeons and Dragons character, he would be a paladin. People on the Internet tend to take the characterization of superheroes seriously to perhaps an unhealthy degree, but it seems the best characterization of Superman is as an earnest, slightly dorky Boy Scout who goes around doing good deeds. The contrast of that good-hearted earnestness with his godlike abilities that would allow him to easily conquer and rule the world is what makes for an interesting character. I also appreciated how the movie dispensed with the overused trope of the Origin Story and just got down to business. In this movie, Lex Luthor is obsessed with destroying Superman and is willing to use both super-advanced technology and engineered geopolitical conflict to do it. Superman, because he's essentially a decent person, doesn't comprehend just how depraved Luthor is, and how far Luthor is willing to go out of petty spite. (Ironically, a billionaire willing to destroy the world out of petty spite is alas, quite realistic). Guy Gardener (“Jerkish Green Lantern”) and the extremely competent and the extremely exasperated Mr. Terrific definitely stole all their scenes. The director of the movie, James Gunn, was quite famously fired from Disney in 2018 for offensive jokes he had made on Twitter back when he was an edgy young filmmaker with an alcohol problem. I suppose Mr. Gunn can rest content knowing that Superman made more money than any Marvel movie released this year. Overall grade: A-   Next up is Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which came out in 1988. This was a very strange movie, but nonetheless, one with an ambitious premise, strong performances, and a strong artistic vision. It's set in post WWII Los Angeles, and “toons” (basically cartoon characters) live and work alongside humans. Private eye Eddie Valiant hates toons since one of them killed his brother five years ago. However, he's hired by the head of a studio who's having trouble with one of his toon actors, Roger Rabbit. Roger's worried his wife Jessica is having an affair, and Valiant obtains pictures of Jessica playing patty cake (not a euphemism, they actually were playing patty cake) with another man. Roger has an emotional breakdown, and soon the other man winds up dead, and Roger insists he's innocent. Valiant and Roger find themselves sucked into a dangerous conspiracy overseen by a ruthless mastermind. This movie was such an interesting cultural artifact. It perfectly follows the structure of a ‘40s film noir movie, but with cartoons, and the dissonance between film noir and the cheerfulness of the toons was embraced and used as a frequently source of comedy. In fact, when the grim and dour Valiant uses the toons' comedy techniques as a tactical improvisation in a moment of mortal peril, it's both hilarious and awesome. Christopher Lloyd's performance as the villainous Judge Doom was amazing. (I don't think it's a spoiler to say that he's villainous, because his character is named Judge Doom and he's literally wearing a black hat.) Like, his performance perfectly captures something monstrous that is trying very hard to pretend to be human and not quite getting it right. And the amount of work it must have taken to make this movie staggers the mind. Nowadays, having live actors interact with cartoon characters is expensive, but not unduly so. It's a frequent technique. You see it all the time in commercials when a housewife is smiling at an animated roll of paper towels or something, and Marvel's essentially been doing it for years. But this was 1988! Computer animation was still a ways off. They had to shoot the movie on analog film, and then hand-draw all the animation and successfully match it to the live film. It wouldn't have worked without the performance of Bob Hoskins as Eddie Valiant, who plays everything perfectly straight in the same way Michael Caine did in A Muppet Christmas Carol. So kind of a strange movie, but definitely worth watching. And it has both Disney and Warner Brothers animated characters in the same movie, which is something we will never, ever see again. Overall grade: A Next up is K-Pop Demon Hunters, which came out in 2025. Like Who framed Roger Rabbit?, this is a very strange movie, but nonetheless with a clear and focused artistic vision. It is a cultural artifact that provides a fascinating look into a world of which I have no knowledge or interest, namely K-pop bands and their dueling fandoms. Anyway, the plot is that for millennia, female Korean musicians have used the magic of their voices to keep the demons locked away in a demon world. The current incarnation is a three-woman K-Pop group called Huntrix, and they are on the verge of sealing away the demons forever. Naturally, the Demon King doesn't like this, so one of his cleverer minions comes up with a plan. They'll start a Demon K-Pop Boy Band! Disguised as humans, the demon K-Pop group will win away Huntrix's fans, allowing them to breach the barrier and devour the world. However, one of the Huntrix musicians is half-demon, and she starts falling for the lead demon in the boy band, who is handsome and of course has a dark and troubled past. Essentially a musical K-drama follows. I have to admit I know practically nothing about K-Pop groups and their dueling fandoms, other than the fact that they exist. However, this was an interesting movie to watch. The animation was excellent, it did have a focused vision, and there were some funny bits. Overall grade: A Next up is Clarkson's Farm Season Four, which came out in 2025. A long time ago in the ‘90s, I watched the episode of Frasier where Frasier and Niles attempt to open a restaurant and it all goes horribly (yet hilariously) wrong. At the time, I had no money, but I promised myself that I would never invest in a restaurant. Nothing I have seen or learned in the subsequent thirty years has ever changed that decision. Season 4 of Clarkson's Farm is basically Jeremy Clarkson, like Frasier and Niles, attempting to open a restaurant, specifically a British pub. On paper it's a good idea, since Clarkson can provide the pub with food produced from his own farm and other local farmers. However, it's an enormous logistical nightmare, and Clarkson must deal with miles of red tape, contractors, and a ballooning budget, all while trying to keep his farm from going under. An excellent and entertaining documentary into the difficulties of both the farming life and food service. I still don't want to own a restaurant! Overall grade: A Next up is Tombstone, which came out in 1993. The Western genre of fiction is interesting because it's limited to such a very specific period of time and geographical region. Like the “Wild West” period that characterizes the Western genre really only lasted as a historical period from about 1865 to roughly 1890. The Western genre was at its most popular in movies from the 1940s and the 1960s, and I wonder if it declined because cultural and demographic changes made it unpopular to romanticize the Old West the way someone like Walt Disney did at Disneyland with “Frontierland.” Of course, the genre lives on in different forms in grittier Western movies, neo-Westerns like Yellowstone and Longmire, and a lot of the genre's conventions apply really well to science fiction. Everyone talks about Firefly being the first Space Western, but The Mandalorian was much more successful and was basically a Western in space (albeit with occasional visits from Space Wizards). Anyway! After that long-winded introduction, let's talk about Tombstone. When Val Kilmer died earlier this year, the news articles mentioned Tombstone as among his best work, so I decided to give it a watch. The plot centers around Wyatt Earp, played by Kurt Russell, who has decided to give up his career in law enforcement and move to Tombstone, Arizona, a silver mining boomtown, in hopes of making his fortune. However, Tombstone is mostly controlled by the Cowboys outlaw gang, and Earp is inevitably drawn into conflict with them. With the help of his brothers and Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer's character), Earp sets out to bring some law and order to Tombstone, whether the Cowboys like it or not. Holliday is in the process of dying from tuberculosis, which makes him a formidable fighter since he knows getting shot will be a less painful and protracted death than the one his illness will bring him. Kilmer plays him as a dissolute, scheming warrior-poet who nonetheless is a very loyal friend. Definitely a classic of the Western genre, and so worth watching. Overall grade: A Next up is Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, the eighth Mission Impossible movie. Of the eight movies, I think the sixth one was the best one, but this one comes in at a close second. It continues on from Dead Reckoning. Ethan Hunt now possesses the key that will unlock the source code of the Entity, the malicious AI (think ChatGPT, but even more obviously evil) that is actively maneuvering the world's nuclear powers into destroying each other so the Entity can rule the remnants of humanity. Unfortunately, the Entity's source code is sitting in a wrecked Russian nuclear sub at the bottom of the Bering Sea. Even more unfortunately, the Entity knows that Hunt has the key and is trying to stop him, even as the Entity's former minion and Hunt's bitter enemy Gabriel seeks to seize control of the Entity for himself. A sense of apocalyptic doom hangs over the movie, which works well to build tension. Once again, the world is doomed, unless Ethan Hunt and his allies can save the day. The tension works extremely well during the movie's underwater sequence, and the final airborne duel between Hunt and Gabriel. I don't know if they're going to make any more Mission Impossible movies after this (they are insanely expensive), but if this is the end, it is a satisfying conclusion for the character of Ethan Hunt and the Impossible Mission Force. Overall grade: A Next up is Deep Cover, which came out in 2025. This is described as a comedy thriller, and I didn't know what to expect when I watched it, but I really enjoyed it. Bryce Dallas Howard plays Kat, a struggling comedy improv teacher living in London. Her best students are Marlon (played by Orlando Bloom), a dedicated character actor who wants to portray gritty realism but keeps getting cast in tacky commercials, and Hugh (played by Nick Mohammed), an awkward IT worker with no social skills whatsoever. One day, the three of them are recruited by Detective Sergeant Billings (played by Sean Bean) of the Metropolitan Police. The Met wants to use improv comedians to do undercover work for minor busts with drug dealers. Since it plays 200 pounds a pop, the trio agrees. Of course, things rapidly spiral out of control, because Kat, Marlon, and Hugh are actually a lot better at improv than they think, and soon they find themselves negotiating with the chief criminals of the London underworld. What follows is a movie that is both very tense and very funny. Kat, Marlon, and Hugh are in way over their heads, and will have to do the best improv of their lives to escape a very grisly fate. Whether Sean Bean dies or not (as is tradition), you will just have to watch the movie and find out. Overall grade: A Next up is Puss in Boots: The Final Wish, which came out in 2022. I don't personally know much about the history of Disney as a corporation, and I don't much care, but I do have several relatives who are very interested in the history of the Disney corporation, and therefore I have picked up some by osmosis. Apparently Disney CEO Michael Eisner forcing out Jeffrey Katzenberg in the 1990s was a very serious mistake, because Katzenberg went on to co-found DreamWorks, which has been Disney's consistent rival for animation for the last thirty years. That's like “CIA Regime Change Blowback” levels of creating your own enemy. Anyway, historical ironies aside, Puss in Boots: The Final Wish was a funny and surprisingly thoughtful animated movie. Puss in Boots is a legendary outlaw and folk hero, but he has used up eight of his nine lives. An ominous bounty hunter who looks like a humanoid wolf begins pursuing him, and the Wolf is able to shrug off the best of Puss In Boots' attacks. Panicked, Puss hides in a retirement home for elderly cats, but then hears rumors of the magical Last Wish. Hoping to use it to get his lives back, Puss In Boots sets off on the quest. It was amusing how Little Jack Horner and Goldilocks and the Three Bears were rival criminal gangs seeking the Last Wish. Overall grade: A Next up is Chicken People, which came out in 2016. A good documentary film gives you a glimpse into an alien world that you would otherwise never visit. In this example, I have absolutely no interest in competitive chicken breeding and will only raise chickens in my backyard if society ever collapses to the level that it becomes necessary for survival. That said, this was a very interesting look into the work of competitive chicken breeding. Apparently, there is an official “American Standard of Perfection” for individual chicken breeds, and the winner of the yearly chicken competition gets the title “Super Grand Champion.” Not Grand Champion, Super Grand Champion! That looks impressive on a resume. It is interesting how chicken breeding is in some sense an elaborate Skinner Box – like you can deliberately set out to breed chickens with the desirable traits on the American Standard of Perfection, but until the chickens are hatched and grow up, you don't know how they're going to turn out, so you need to try again and again and again… Overall grade: A Next up is The Mask of Zoro, which came out in 1998. I saw this in the theatre when it came out 27 years ago, but that was 27 years ago, and I don't have much of a memory of it, save that I liked it. So when I had the chance to watch it again, I did! Anthony Hopkins plays Diego de la Vega, who has the secret identity of Zorro in the final days before Mexico breaks away from the Spanish Empire. With Mexico on the verge of getting its independence, Diego decides to hang up his sword and mask and focus on his beloved wife and daughter. Unfortunately, the military governor Don Montero realizes Diego is Zorro, so has him arrested, kills his wife, and steals his baby daughter to raise as his own. Twenty years later, a bandit named Alejandro loses his brother and best friends to a brutal cavalry commander. It turns out that Montero is returning to California from Spain, and plans to seize control of California as an independent republic (which, of course, will be ruled by him). In the chaos, Diego escapes from prison and encounters a drunken Alejandro, and stops him from a futile attack upon the cavalry commander. He then proposes a pact – Diego will train Alejandro as the next Zorro, and together they can take vengeance upon the men who wronged them. This was a good movie. It was good to see that my taste in movies 27 years ago wasn't terrible. It manages to cram an entire epic plot into only 2 hours and 20 minutes. In some ways it was like a throwback to a ‘40s movie but with modern (for the ‘90s) production values, and some very good swordfights. Overall grade: A Next up is Wick is Pain, which came out in 2025. I've seen all four John Wick movies and enjoyed them thoroughly, though I've never gotten around to any of the spinoffs. Wick is Pain is a documentary about how John Wick went from a doomed indie movie with a $6.5 million hole in its budget to one of the most popular action series of the last few decades. Apparently Keanu Reeves made an offhand joke about how “Wick is pain” and that became the mantra of the cast and crew, because making an action movie that intense really was a painful experience. Definitely worth watching if you enjoyed the John Wick movies or moviemaking in general. Overall grade: A The last movie I saw this summer was Game Night, which came out in 2016. It was a hilarious, if occasionally dark comedy action thriller. Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams play Max and Annie Davis, a married couple who are very competitive and enjoy playing games of all kinds. Jason has an unresolved conflict with his brother Brooks, and one night Brooks invites them over for game night, which Max resents. Halfway through the evening, Brooks is kidnapped, with Max and Annie assume is part of the game. However, Brooks really is involved in something shady. Hilarity ensues, and it's up to Max and Annie to rescue Brooks and stay alive in the process. This was really funny, though a bit dark in places. That said, Max and Annie have a loving and supportive marriage, so it was nice to see something like that portrayed on the screen. Though this also leads to some hilarity, like when Annie accidentally shoots Max in the arm. No spoilers, but the punchline to that particular sequence was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Overall grade: A So no A+ movie this time around, but I still saw a bunch of solid movies I enjoyed. One final note, I have to admit, I've really come to respect Adam Sandler as an entertainer, even if his movies and comedy are not always to my taste. He makes what he wants, makes a lot of money, ensures that his friends get paid, and then occasionally takes on a serious role in someone else's movie when he wants to flex some acting muscles. I am not surprised that nearly everyone who's in the original Happy Gilmore who was still alive wanted to come back for Happy Gilmore 2. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show enjoyable and perhaps a guide to some good movies to watch. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

Welcome back to Mining Media where we turn your binging into better TTRPG experiences by telling the next episode or next book "You will not break me," and soldiering on anyway because goddamnit, Donut, someone's gotta try and save all these ideas.   This month we're talking about the absurdly popular (and deserving) LitRPG book series Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. These books follow Carl and his ex-girlfriend's prize show champion cat Donut into a televised level-0 funnel on the newest season of Dungeon Crawler World, a popular galactic game show where survivors fight through 18 levels of awful dungeon in hopes of making it out some kind of alive.   This series is 1) hilarious, 2) way better than it has any right being, and 3) somehow has you crying over the most insanely out-of-pocket characters in truly deranged dungeon level concepts, but it's full of great ideas, too! And it's the 2nd book series we've done on Mining Media that is actually getting a TTRPG!   I've been sick, so this is all you're getting for a description this week. Listen to the episode and let me know if you think I missed anything good to use at the gaming table!   ----more---- Join the DMs After Dark Discord channel!   I made a Ko-Fi if you feel absurdly generous and want to help cover podcast hosting costs & all the upkeep. I'm still working on whether I want to offer anything special over there or just give my extreme gratitude (maybe some stickers or something in the mail) to those who donate, but no pressure whatsoever :)   Where to Follow Rene Plays Games: LinkTree |  BlueSky | Threads | Instagram | Facebook | DMs After Dark Rene's Games: MECH | MECH Cities 2 | One Last Quest email: RenePlaysGamesPod@gmail.com   Music in the Episode (in order of appearance): Music from Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/hoffy-beats/victory-lap 

Hi MPAT studios. Heard you were reading LitRPG.

In the much-delayed final episode of our series on mindset for writers, we take a look at when writers should change course, and talk about the importance of mental flexibility. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Frostborn series at my Payhip store: AUGUSTFROST The coupon code is valid through September 8, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 265 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is August 22nd, 2025, and today we are considering when a writer should change course. This is a new episode. It's the third and final one in the mindset series that I had hoped to finish in June, but it was a very busy summer, and so I ran quite a few reruns of old episodes over the summer, but today I have time to record a full length episode, so we're going to do that and wrap up this series on mindset that we've been doing this summer. We will also do Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. First up is Coupon of the Week and this week's coupon will get you 25% off ebooks in the Frostborn series at my Payhip store, and that code is AUGUSTFROST. As always, the coupon code and the store links will be available in the show notes for this episode, and this coupon code will be valid through September 8th, 2025. So if you need a new ebook to read as we wrap up summer and head into fall, we have got you covered. Now let's do an update on my current writing projects. I'm pleased to report to that Ghost in the Siege, the sixth and final book of the Ghost Armor series, is out. You can get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, Smashwords, and my Payhip store. And with that, my Super Summer of Finishing Things is finally complete because I have finished the Shield War series, the Stealth and Spells trilogy, and now the Ghost Armor series. So now that those three series are done, what is next? Right now my main project is Blade of Flames, the first book in a new epic fantasy series that will be set in the Kingdom of Owyllain from my Sevenfold Sword series and I am 29,000 words into that. My secondary project right now is Cloak of Worlds, the 13th book in the Cloak Mage series, and I am 1,000 words into that. So hopefully we will have Blade of Flames come out towards the end of September and Cloak of Worlds come out towards the end of October, if all goes well. So my plan now that I have only three unfinished series is that the Blades of Ruin series (of which Blade Flames is the first one) will be my flagship series, and I'll do one of those every other month and then the month in between I will alternate between writing a Cloak Mage book and a Half-Elven Thief book. I will continue that schedule until one of those series is completed and then I will start a new one because what I learned through 2024 and the first two thirds here of 2025 is that having five unfinished series at the same time is too many. It's hard to keep up in my head and it makes for a really long wait for the readers between the individual entries in the series. So I'm going to stick to just three from now on and as I said, I'll have a flagship series and then two that I will alternate back and forth between in the months between the releases for the flagship series. So that is probably what I'll be doing for the rest of 2025 and hopefully most of 2026, if all goes well. In audiobook news, recording is underway for Shield of Power, which will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills. I've been listening to some chapters from that. Work has just started by Hollis McCarthy on recording Ghost in the Siege, so that will hopefully be an audiobook before too much longer. So that's where I'm at with my current writing and publishing and audiobook projects. 00:03:29 Main Topic: Mindset Series: Changing Course And now to our main topic, the final episode in our mindset series and we talk about changing course. In previous episodes on this topic, I've talked about some of the practical ways to help with distractions, procrastinating, and managing time wasters. In this episode, I'm going to focus on things that derail writers from a mindset perspective. Today we're going to wrap up this series by talking about mental flexibility, knowing when to change course, and how to make those types of decisions without spiraling out. First, we'll discuss a few reasons why mental flexibility is an important attribute to possess and then provide you with five examples of times it has been important for me in my writing career. First, why is having mental flexibility and the ability to change course important? With how fast things change in publishing, you have to be willing to change strategies or discard a strategy that's not working for you. An example is that many people who are familiar with Amazon ads swear by using Amazon keyword ads. After much experimentation, I concluded they weren't very helpful for fiction. The reason for that is I found that for most books that are sold off Amazon, people will sit down and type, for example, “Brandon Sanderson latest book” or “J.D. Robb latest book” or “Stephen King latest book” and so on. If you bid high enough, you can get top of search for those where if you pay $2 a click or $2 for the bid and someone types in “Stephen King latest book”, you can get your book to appear at the top of the page with the ad. However, in practice, what actually happens is the person who sat down to look for “Stephen King latest book” isn't looking for your book, he's looking for Stephen King's latest book. So he or she will simply scroll past the ad result with your book and then click on Stephen King's book. The only way I found that keyword advertising works for fiction is if you write towards very specific tropes and are willing to pay a lot of money for those clicks. For example, you write a romance that's a “slow burn, no spice, enemies to lovers romance”, and there are people who search for exactly those tropes, and if you use keyword ads to bid for that, you could get it, but it's very expensive and it's very difficult to turn a profit. Because of my experiments with this, I saw that although many people say keyword ads are essential, I didn't cling to that piece of advice and switched my Amazon ad focus to having a few more category ads and Audible ads for each title, and that has been pretty nearly profitable most of the time, certainly more profitable than just relying on keyword ads would be. I should note the one exception for that would be that keywords ads do work very well for nonfiction where, for example, my Linux Command Line book, I can pretty easily run ads to it for search terms like “Linux Command Line” or “Linux Command Prompt.” And because people are looking for a nonfiction book on that topic without looking for a specific author, that can work. In keyword ads, I found that for fiction, people are looking for a specific author and want that specific author, whereas for nonfiction, they're looking for the topic and don't care so much about the author, so long as the book has good reviews and looks like the author knows what he or she is talking about. Another reason to be mentally flexible is that something new might actually make things easier for you. I used to work in IT support, and so I fairly often encountered someone who stubbornly clings to the way they learn something. I knew numerous people who memorized a specific way to do a task on their computer and then just stuck to that and avoided doing anything easier, such as, for example, not learning to use keyboard shortcuts. And as you know, if you do a lot of office work, learning keyboard shortcuts like Control + C for copy, Control + V for paste, or Control + Z to undo can save you a whole lot of time over compared to very laboriously clicking through the menus with your mouse. People like that very frequently resist a learning curve in favor of a slower approach because it's working for them, but then they lose out on a faster and easier way to do something. Change is not always good, but sometimes change can be good. And the thing about indie publishing is that change is constant. In a field where change is constant like indie publishing, you can't cling to something that first worked when you started out. Trying new software, learning new skills, and keeping up with changes in ebook platforms is something self-published writers must do. Another reason to retain mental flexibility is you might be missing out on a source of revenue. If you're not willing to change sales strategies when the market changes, you might be missing out on potential readers. For example, as people are tightening their budgets in these times of economic uncertainty, they might be less likely to buy individual books and focus their book spending on a subscription like Kindle Unlimited or Kobo Plus. If you don't have content on those platforms for readers, you're missing out on readers who have shifted their spending. For myself, I only have some of my books on Kindle Unlimited because of the exclusivity requirement, but everything I have on Kobo should be available through Kobo Plus, and typically on any given month on Kobo, at least 60% of my revenue tends to come from Kobo Plus instead of Kobo direct book sales. So that was a place where it was necessary to have the mental flexibility to make a pivot. Another good reason to be mentally flexible is that you might be missing out on something important that the data is showing you. One of the big advantages of being self-published is having access to complex and real-time data instead of having to wait for biannual royalty statements that don't provide information. There are some criticisms that can be leveled at Amazon for how much data they show authors. However, this is light years ahead of the kind of sales data that comes out of traditional publishing for writers where royalty statements were often quite arcane and difficult to understand by design, so the publishers could get away with paying the authors as little as possible. And because you have access to this data, you have basis for solid information, solid decision-making. For example, if one of my series is starting very strong in the UK in its first week of release, I can shift some of my ad spending to UK specific ads. Looking at sales and ad data gives you an opportunity to respond and change your approach. And sales data, even more than reviews, tells you if a book, series, or genre is working for you or if it's time to try something new. It's important not to fall prey to what's called the sunk cost fallacy, where you throw even more time and money on something that isn't profitable in hope of recouping the money that you've already spent. Sometimes it's wise to know when to cut your losses and run. It's probably a better use of your time to focus on the next book or series. Data can tell you which book or series that readers are most excited to see from you. Now that we've talked about the various good reasons that mental flexibility is important, I thought it'd be helpful to show you five times that I've had to use mental flexibility and change course over the course of my career as a writer. #1: Self-publishing. For all that I've been a proponent of self-publishing for the last 14 years, that wasn't always the case. I started out with the goal in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s of being traditionally published. Demonsouled actually was traditionally published along with some short stories. However, for a variety of reasons that I've talked about before, this turned out to be a dead end. Traditional publishing at that time was not interested in fantasy series like mine. I felt like traditional publishing was a dead end, and then I changed my efforts to blogging on computer-based topics. I'm still quite proud of the fact that in 2010, I made a good bit of money from Google Ad Sense off my tech blog, a feat which was difficult then and would probably be impossible now. Then I started to hear about self-publishing through Amazon, which at the time was a very new phenomenon. I started hearing about that in 2009/2010, thereabouts, and I initially wasn't very impressed and I wasn't very impressed with the idea of ebooks altogether. At the time, I had a huge collection of paper books and well, I don't have as many now. I still do have a fair bit of paper books, but at the time, I didn't think that ebooks could be a substitute for traditional paper books. Then at the end of 2010, in fact, the week after Thanksgiving, I bought my first Kindle, a third generation Kindle that was famously called the Kindle Keyboard because they had that little keyboard at the bottom, and I was very impressed with the device. I thought there has got to be a way to make money off this. As I started reading various writers groups, I came across Kindle Direct Publishing, and finally in April of 2011, I decided to give it a go and republished Demonsouled through it, and that's where it all began for me. #2: Learning new skills and adapting. I think one of the biggest parts of why I've been fortunate enough to be able to do this for as long as I have is the willingness to take the time and effort to learn or try something new. I've had to teach myself how to format ebooks in several different programs, how to start first the LLC and then a S Corp, which finally involved realizing I couldn't do it myself and hiring people familiar with the appropriate documentation to do it for me, how to hire narrators and proof audio, how to file 1099s for narrators (that was a whole experience, lemme tell you), how to create a direct sales platform on Payhip, how to create my own book covers in Photoshop, how to make various 3D images myself for those book covers, how to maintain and update my website, how to do Amazon ads, how to do BookBub ads, how to do Facebook ads. So in the past 14 years I've been doing this, I think it's fair to say I've acquired quite a few new skills along the way. Each time I weighed out if not having this skill was holding me back. For example, creating my own covers became an absolute necessity for me after a while because even the most experienced cover designers could not create covers at the pace I published. Well, they could, but it's more accurate to say that the cover designers, the really good cover designers, the ones I wanted to hire, worked so far out in advance that you had to book them nine months to maybe a year in advance. And I eventually came to find that very rigid and constraining to my writing process. A couple of my books have titles that are totally unrelated to what the book is about, just because I had to pick the title like nine months, twelve months out in advance. And while they were very good covers, I did find it a little bit constraining that I had to try and keep the book at least close to what the cover was. If I hadn't changed course and learned how to do it myself, it would've limited how many books I could publish in a year, and likely it would've cost me many thousands a year in lost revenue. Therefore, having the mental flexibility to learn new things is a major skill in self-publishing. And the thing I'm contemplating learning right now is something with video, because short form video seems to be a good way that many authors are connecting with their readers and their audience. It's just that I don't personally use short form video a lot, so I'm wondering if it'd be worth the effort to learn. I think it'd probably be worth the effort to learn, but I haven't decided on how to do that and need to do some more reading, which is another aspect of mental flexibility. #3: Changing pricing strategies. Permafree pricing book for free on ebook platforms was not as common of a strategy when I first started self-publishing in 2011. I mean, people were doing it, but not as many as now. At the time (and to this day, in fact), many people were outraged that thought of giving out an ebook for free and opine that it would devalue their work. The argument was that if you take a year to write a book and then people should at least be willing to pay as much as they would for, for example, a fancy Starbucks coffee. However, this overlooks the reality of economics where that something is only as valuable as people are willing to pay for it. And that in fact is, a good way to get people to pay for your remaining books is if they read the first one for free and then they like it enough that suddenly the remainder of the books in the series will have value for them and hopefully they will buy it. But back in 2011, I decided to give permafree a try because I had series instead of standalones, and it has been one of the most significant ways that people have found my work. If I listened to the sort of old school traditional thinking about pricing ebooks, I would've missed out on this opportunity. #4: Doubling down on audio. At one point, towards the end of, actually towards the middle of 2023, I was considering and had almost decided to give up on producing my own audiobooks due to the significant expense and how much time having to proof them was taking away from my writing. Instead, I thought about ways to make the workload easier. I hired someone to proof the audiobooks for me and then found ways to promote them through deals on platforms like BookBub and Chirp. I started to create more Amazon ads for them and focus on making audiobook anthologies because these are very attractive to people trying to get the most out of their Audible credit each month. Although it's still mainly a tax deduction for me at this point in terms of business value, I would've lost out on a growing revenue source and a big piece of the publishing market if I had given up on audiobooks. #5: And fifth and finally, as I've talked about before, the Stealth and Spells series. This series really challenged me because I had a very specific plan for a multi-book series (I was thinking like seven or eight books originally) and enjoyed writing the first one. However, there were a few problems with it that forced me to take a hard look at the series and change my original plans quite drastically. The series was originally called Sevenfold Sword Online, which confused fans of the original Sevenfold Sword series. I made the choice to change the title to Stealth and Spells Online to make the separation clearer, even though it's a pain to change titles, and that came with some confusion of its own. I also changed the covers to resemble some of the other LitRPG books because it was originally closer in look to some of my epic fantasy covers. These changes did help, but I had to take a cold hard look at the data. Sales and ad data clearly showed that it was time to cut my losses and focus on more profitable series. So I changed my series plans to wrap everything up in the third and final book rather than a multi-book series as I had originally planned and based on reader reception to the third book, I think it went pretty well. Ultimately, you can only plan so much as a writer, and you have to accept that those plans might need to change. One of the best gifts you can give yourself as a writer is the ability to be mentally flexible and not stick with plans, books, or attitudes that aren't working for you. Well, I hope you have enjoyed this mindset series and found it useful to your own situation. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to the Pul Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes athttps://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.      

We're joined by Dungeon Crawler Carl creator Matt Dinniman and legendary audiobook narrator Jeff Hays! From self-publishing to bestsellers, TV adaptations, Dragon Con, and the voices behind Carl & Donut—this is the definitive DCC interview.

The Wandering Tavern presents:  "RIFT" by Nancy E. Dunne  Narrated by William Walker! Stay up to date with Nancy's new releases (and her doggos) at nancyedunne.com Learn more about William Walker HERE Visit thewanderingtavern.com! Follow @TWTavern on Instagram!

Mystic Neptune talks cozy fantasy, LitRPG, and Hearth Con.You can find out more about Hearth Con at lazydragonbooks.comA reluctant heroine finds unexpected love when she's sent to assassinate a lonely dark lord in the first book of this cozy romantasy series.Henrietta Doryn has never enjoyed fighting. She'd rather be in the kitchen baking cookies. But it's her duty as Warrior Princess to face off against the forces of evil. As such, she's unceremoniously shooed from her kingdom to go eliminate the all-powerful Dark Lord next door.Keith Monfort has never enjoyed ruling with an iron fist. He'd prefer to be in his workroom tinkering with practical magic. But it's his duty to lead the Dark Enchanted Forest and the forces of evil. So when Henrietta shows up at his door, he's only too happy to invite her in for tea to talk it out instead.Can this unlikely pair prevent war between their two kingdoms? Where do their true loyalties lie? And when will they finally confess their growing feelings for each other?Blending the best of love stories, fairy tales, and whimsy—with just a dash of mystery provided by the soothsaying Madame Potts's enigmatic announcements—I Ran Away to Evil is a deliciously delightful start to a charming romantic-comedy LitRPG series.

Last week's episode talked about finishing my STEALTH & SPELLS ONLINE LitRPG trilogy, and in this week's episode we respond to some of the insightful reader comments the prevoius episode generated. We also discuss the mechanics of putting series numbers on book covers. Once again it is time for Coupon of the Week! This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragonskull series at my Payhip store: DRAGONSUMMER25 The coupon code is valid through August 25, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 262 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is August 8, 2025, and today we are looking at reader comments on my LitRPG trilogy. We will also take a look at why sometimes books do not have the series order number on their front cover. Before we get into that, we'll have Coupon of the Week and then an update on my current writing progress. First up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragonskull series at my Payhip store. That coupon code is DRAGONSUMMER25. And as always, the coupon code and the links to my store will be available in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through August 25th, 2025. So if you need a new ebook to read this summer, we have got you covered. And now for a progress update on my current writing projects. I am 83,000 words into the rough draft of Ghost in the Siege, which is the sixth and final book in the Ghost Armor series. I think maybe one or two more good sessions and I will have the rough draft done and then I'll write a bonus short story that newsletter subscribers will get for free when the book comes out and then start editing. I'm also 9,000 words into Blade of Flames, which will be the first book in my new epic fantasy series after I finish Ghost in the Siege and my Super Summer of Finishing Things. In audiobook news, Brad Wills is currently recording Shield of Power, so we should have some updates on that soon. In addition, the distribution problems I was having with Shield of Battle and Ghost in the Corruption should be cleared up. So all those books should be turning up on all the usual audiobook stores before too much longer. Before, they should have all been available on Audible, Amazon, Apple, Google Play, and Kobo, but they should be showing up on all the other available stores before too much longer now. And of course I should mention that those audiobooks are available on my Payhip store and you can get them anytime (regardless of distribution troubles). So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:02:07 Question about Series Numbering And now let's take a look at a question about series numbering. A librarian acquaintance recently asked (with no small exasperation), why can't the series number be in the book title, on the spine, and on the cover? Well, as with so many things, the answer boils down to “it depends”, specifically, it depends on the publisher and the author (but only if the author is indie). For my books, they always have the series number on the cover. A random example- Orc Hoard, the fourth book in my Half-Elven Thief series, has plainly at the top of the cover “Half-Elven Thief Number Four”. Whether or not the series number will be on the cover depends on the publisher (or the writer, if the writer is indie). For myself, since I make my own covers, it is a trivial amount of extra work to make sure the series number is also on the cover. A small publisher or an indie author hiring a cover designer has to specifically ask for the series number on the cover, and they don't always think to do that. In terms of the spine of the print edition, it depends whether or not it is included with cover design. Typically for a print book, you need to make a wraparound PDF cover or you can use the automated tools with a platform like KDP Print to create it. The trouble is that space can be at a premium on a book spine and after you have the book title and the author name, there might not be adequate room left for the series number. For example, a title like Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest takes up a lot of real estate on the spine and combine that with the author name of Jonathan Moeller, and we really don't exactly have much space left to work with. However, for ebooks, there's really no good reason for them not to be arranged in series order on the store because all the online platforms now have good series management tools, which is admittedly a relatively new development. For a long time Amazon and the other self-publishing platforms didn't have any series metadata management tools, so we had to take things into our own hands. That's why for a long time you'd see books with titles like Frostborn: The Iron Tower (Frostborn #5), because there was no other way in the metadata to indicate that the book was part of a series. Obviously this was a problem. So eventually all the self-publishing platforms added series manager tools. So now it's fairly easy to add ebooks to a series, so on the storefront they should show up in the proper series order. But for tradpub print books, I expect traditional publishers are not terribly invested in providing series numbers on the spines of print books because it is a layer of from their perspective, unnecessary work with no return on investment. Remember, most publishers are owned by big international conglomerates these days, and from the corporate owner's perspective, the publisher's existence boils down to a cell in a spreadsheet. So a series will only get new cover art (potentially numbers on the cover) if doing so might make “number go up” in that particular spreadsheet cell. A series is most likely to get numbers on its cover and its spine if it's one, finished and two, popular enough to be re-released with new covers. So the “too long, didn't read” answer: it depends if the publisher or the indie author has the resources to add numbers to the cover. 00:05:01 Main Topic of the Week: Comments on my LitRPG Trilogy Now onto our main topic this week, reader comments on my LitRPG trilogy. You might remember last week I did an episode and a blog post about the experience of finishing up my LitRPG trilogy and some of the misjudgments I made during the process and how I was grateful for the people who did enjoy it. And this inspired many interesting and insightful comments on the topic. So I thought I would read through some of the comments and share my own thoughts on them. Our first comment is from LEJ who says: “The big problem with virtual reality type LitRPG books is that virtual reality fights have no real stakes or consequences, or if they do, they're being arbitrarily assigned. This makes them dull no matter how well the fight scene is written. The second problem is character. In epic fantasy, the party members are developed characters and the reader learns who they are through the “show, not tell” guideline of writing. The characters are a group of people who have come together to put their lives on the line to do the plot is about. In a virtual reality game book, the party members are fake personas playing a game. There's no way to be sure who they really are and they're not invested. In books and in real life, people who go through grave peril together often forge powerful friendships. A gaming group is a lousy stand in for an actual epic fantasy questing party because they're not facing actual danger together.” That's an interesting comment and that was something I thought about during the outlining of Stealth and Spells, how essentially so much of the book is about a man sitting in a chair playing in a game, which is inherently not suspenseful. So that's why in Stealth and Spells, I designed it so that the game itself was dangerous and the reason the main character was playing the game so much was to try and find proof that the game was dangerous. But I think LEJ makes a good larger point about how why LitRPGs with virtual reality MMORPGs aren't as popular as the other subgenres, just because the stakes are so low essentially when you're playing a game. I was playing Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord the other night and had a total party kill, but so what? Just spin out new characters and start the game again. But that doesn't make for a good narrative tension in the story. Our next comment is from Justin who says: “There are some VR LitRPG books out, but they are a niche market. As LEJ noted (above), there's no real consequences and the character development is minimal. The successful ones (for measures of success) go heavy on humor. I like Stealth and Spells, but I like science fiction and had no problem with the premise. So another attempt at widening your audience has fallen flat. Sorry about that. The mystery market that you tried before is even worse now with AI pastiches flooding Kindle. You could try the superhero section, but there's lot of competition and the big boys have been stinking up that particular room, so I wouldn't recommend it. Well, at least you're a successful writer, able to apply your craft full time. That puts you in the top 1%. Getting any further requires either incredible luck or selling your soul. I look forward to Ghost in the Siege!” Thanks, Justin. I'm glad you liked the Stealth and Spells trilogy. It is true that I'm very fortunate to be able to do what I do in terms of writing full-time. I should mention I'm not hugely worried about AI books partly because they're generally not very good and partly because you can't legally copyright them. Though we should mention that historically writers often have a difficult time when they try to change a genre. Even 150 years ago, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle decided he wanted to write a historical fiction instead of Sherlock Holmes, so he killed off Sherlock Holmes and wrote historical fiction, which didn't go hugely over well with the public, and eventually he succumbed both to popular demand and large sums of money to start writing Sherlock Holmes again. Our next comment is from Joe who says: “I have never read a LitRPG book before. I read it because I enjoy your writing. I know I am in the minority, but it turned out to be my favorite series. Even though it shouldn't, it amazes me that Half-Elven Thief has done so much better. I guess I just dance to the beat of my own drummer.” Well, I suppose everyone dances to the beat of their own drummer in the end. I do think it's important for writers to remember, especially long-term writers like myself, that every book you've written is somebody's favorite book regardless of your personal opinion about it. Like for example, I think in all honesty, Tower of Endless Worlds is one of my weaker series. I was trying to do something in terms of urban fantasy that I don't think I had the writing skills to do until I started writing Cloak Games fourteen years later. But there are several people for whom Tower of Endless Worlds is their favorite book of all the ones I've written. So it's good to always keep that in mind and not trash one's own work unnecessarily because you are then trashing somebody's favorite book, which is just impolite. In terms of Half-Elven Thief doing better, I think that is because I really narrowed in better on the market for that than I did with Stealth and Spells. We've already talked about how Isekai, portal fantasy, progression fantasy, and System Apocalypse are much more popular genres than virtual reality LitRPG, but with Half-Elven Thief, I think I really narrowed into what the market wants and what my own particular skillset is for writing stories. So it worked pretty well. I'm very happy about that. Our next comment is from Geoff, who said: “Just went through and finished it and I absolutely loved it. It's a shame it only ended up being three when you had plans for more, but you ended it really well and made it feel like it was always meant to be ended that way. Really love that big reveal at the end about Calliande and Ridmark.” Thanks, Geoff. I'm very glad you liked the ending. I admit I thought really hard for a really long time about how to properly finish the series with just one book. I typically, as part of my exercise program, do an hour a day on the treadmill in the morning with variable rate cardio and I was thinking about Stealth and Spells a lot while I was doing that, so I'm very grateful that you appreciated the ending. Our next comment is from Keith who says: “I'm so glad you finished the series. I have avidly read pretty much everything you published almost as soon as you publish it (except the Ghost series finally lost me a year or two ago), and I was starting to wonder if you're going to continue this series. I'm sure I enjoyed Stealth and Spells a bit more because of my own experience with MMORPG games as an adult, no less from 1997 to about 2012 and still dabbled now and then. It was very entertaining reading the series about a game set in Ridmark's world that I've been so immersed in for the past few years. It's unfortunate that there won't be more Stealth and Spells to read, but I enjoyed the way the series ended as a trilogy, even though you say it was originally supposed to be more books.” Thanks, Keith. I am glad you enjoyed the ending. I suppose one of my weaknesses as I set out to write this trilogy was that I've never actually seriously played MMORPG. It was just when things like World of Warcraft and its various successors and imitators became popular it was a time in my life when I was both pretty broke and pretty busy, so I couldn't afford to play an MMORPG and even if I could have afforded to play an MMORPG, I wouldn't have had the time to do so. I think that lacking that experience may have been one of the reasons I had a bit of trouble sort of connecting the series to a wider market. That said, I have tried an MMORPG recently, Elder Scrolls Online. I enjoyed it, but the big problem with that, and the reason I didn't keep playing was that you can't pause it. I think it's fair to say that I'm a pretty busy guy and sometimes I need to pause the game right now and attend to things, but the inability to do that was just a huge deal breaker for me, so I just never really continued with it, though I did have fun with the parts I played and think it's a good game. Randy says: “I still maintain it's a great SF series and a great setting, but it does have a great ending, even if the hero never gets an encrypted message from Wire again.” Thanks, Randy. If I ever do return to this setting, it won't be as a LitRPG. It'll be just as a straight science fiction thriller adventure like Silent Order because while I don't particularly want to write another LitRPG series, I would like to write another science fiction series at some point. But as I've mentioned on earlier episodes, I've decided it's probably for the best to limit myself to three ongoing series at any one time, just for keeping the complexity level manageable. So once I finish one of my ongoing series (which currently would be Blades of Ruin, Half-Elven Thief, and Cloak Mage), then I might consider slotting a sci-fi one in as well. Our next comment is from Mike who says: “Thank you for sharing your thoughts on it. I really enjoyed the series and I'm glad you finished it. I always find it frustrating when an author leaves the story unfinished, but I understand it's a tough balance. At the end of the day, writing needs to be sustainable and that often means the books have to be profitable. So thank you for seeing it through.” Thanks Mike. I'm glad you enjoyed the ending. In terms of sustainability, Half-Elven Thief by itself across its entire lifetime has sold more than all three books of Stealth and Spells Online put together (which I am very grateful for). And the Half-Elven Thief series and the, let's see, three sequels for it I wrote in 2024 combined, did well enough to pay for my health insurance for that year, which is trust me, no small thing, for which I'm very grateful. But like I said before, I think Half-Elven Thief dialed into the market a bit better than I did with Stealth and Spells Online. Our next comment comes from Alon who says. “If you try again, you can consider progression fantasy; it is somewhere between regular and LitRPG. The best ones are Dungeon Crawler Carl and Mother of Learning.” Well, if you want to try some progression fantasy, there are some examples for you. I admit I've only read the first book of Dungeon Crawler Carl. I thought it was pretty good, if definitely a bit on the darker side. William says: “I think LitRPG/Isekai literature and other media is best understood as a specific kind of fantasy in the literal sense that happens to use fantasy aesthetics because the people in Japan who started writing it all grew up playing Dragon Quest as kids do and still do. Yet the core of said fantasy has nothing to do with the cultural nostalgia that drives a fantasy genre we know and love, but instead reflects a desire for a non-complex world where everything follows easily understood and quantifiable rules, which the authors and the readers found in video games. Anyway, I enjoyed Stealth and Spells Online as a sci-fi thriller. It reminded me of the MMOPG subplot in Tad William's Outland novels.” Thanks, William. I'm glad you enjoyed the series. And I think that's a good point about the lack of ambiguity in some LitRPG, because Stealth and Spells has quite a bit of ambiguity to it at times, where the protagonist is trying to figure out if he can trust Hardcase19. He's trying to figure out who is controlling the Calliande NPC and he's trying to determine if he can trust that person or persons as well. So there's a lot of ambiguity in there that I think I probably picked up from how many mystery novels I enjoy and that might clash with the more popular tropes in LitRPG. Jesse says: “I'm glad you gave us a proper ending and I enjoyed discovering the identity of the Calliande/Ridmark NPCs. Honestly, the bit I will miss is you taking cracks at yourself (“failed historian”, “author secure in the knowledge he would never have to visualize it”), which was hysterical. Well done, sir.” Thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed the series and like I said before, I really didn't want to leave it unfinished because for a variety of reasons, it is very bad in the fantasy genre to leave things unfinished. Our next comment is from Jason who says: “Thank you for finishing the series. As you say, it was more of a science fiction thriller than a LitRPG. Nonetheless, I did enjoy it. LitRPGs have the roots in manga with their audience being teens and young adults who play video games and have kind of wish fulfillment of applying their game experience to a quasi-real world, usually like Death March to a Parallel World Rhapsody (a very long web novel, pretty bad anime, ongoing light novels and manga), combined with the cheat/administrator system to break the world in the main character's favor. Often such stories include female characters who throw themselves at the male lead for no discernible reason to be met with obliviousness, terror, or indifference. Fortunately, as authors have gotten older and married their portrayals, male characters and love interests have become more mature as well. The herbivore (a male character with no interest in women) main character still shows up, but not as often.” Thanks, Jason. I am glad you enjoyed the series and I was thinking about that to the extent that the basis that LitRPG has a strong basis in wish fulfillment and sort of retreating from reality. And I'm more interested in stories where the protagonist tends to actively protagonize and then engage with and grapple with reality. So maybe that was why I chose to write a VR based LitRPG instead of one of the other genres. And our last comment is from Michael who says: “I'm saddened that it wasn't more popular, but your reasoning makes sense to me. I tried to get into LitRPG years ago when it first appeared, but struggled to find any of the stories interesting despite loving MMORPGs and games in general. It all seemed to be about the kind of dreams that a stereotypical 14-year-old boy might have- being able to hyperfocus on min/maxing statistics, being powerful, being able to forget about the prosaic real world, being a ruler of a village/kingdom, et cetera (oh, and having lots of attractive women adore you). In any case, thanks for finishing the series. I thought it went from strength to strength and Final Quest was really good.” Thanks, Michael. I'm glad you enjoyed the books. And I have joked several times that maybe what I really needed to do to make Stealth and Spells Online popular was to add a harem of anime monster girls for the protagonist. But that ties into what we were talking about earlier where a lot of LitRPG is about sort of a flight from reality, which I should mention, there's nothing wrong with that in literature, but I'm more interested in writing the kind of stories where the protagonist has to grapple in some way with reality. So that is all the comments we are going to talk about on the show. I'd like to thank everybody who first, read and enjoyed the Stealth and Spells Online books, and second, took the time to share their thoughts about it. It was a really interesting discussion, I thought. So thank you again for reading Stealth and Spells Online. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to the Pulp Writer Show. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy, and we'll see you all next week.

  Renegade Game Studios announces a “full scale” Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG based on Matt Dinniman's popular LitRPG series. The game will immerse players in the hilariously brutal world of Carl, featuring deadly traps, absurd loot, and relentless entertainment derived from the book series about a Coast Guard veteran and his ex-girlfriend's cat competing in […]

Long before booktok was an even worse place known as SomethingAwful. A squalid, terrible place, it nonetheless gave birth to many characters that have become Internet darlings--such as Nick "ulillillia" Smith.Ulillillia is one of the coolest people ever; despite a hard childhood of video game-induced phobias, he mastered the art of self-improvement by conceiving of his perceived faults as EXP bars in an RPG. Unfortunately, however, his debut novel The Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters is a bit of a mess. Join Andrew and J in another book deep dive and analysis through the sands of time, and see just what the adventures of Knuckles and Speed can offer writers--particularly those interested in LitRPG and adjacent genres.

In this week's episode, I take a look back at the challenges of finishing my STEALTH & SPELLS ONLINE LitRPG trilogy. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobooks in the Malison series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: MALISONSUMMER50 The coupon code is valid through August 18, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 262 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is August 1, 2025, and today we are looking at how I finished my LitRPG trilogy at long last. Before we get into that, we will have Coupon of the Week, a progress update on my current writing and audiobook projects, and Question of the Week. First up is Coupon of the Week. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobooks in the Malison series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: MALISONSUMMER50. And as always, we will include the coupon code and the link to my Payhip store in the show notes. And this coupon code is valid through August 18th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we have got you covered. Now let's take a look at where I'm at with my current writing projects. As I mentioned in previous episodes, Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest, the final book in the Stealth and Spells Online trilogy, is finished. You can get that at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. It is doing slightly better than the previous two in the trilogy, which makes it the bestselling book in the trilogy so far. So thank you all for that. My next main project is Ghost in the Siege, which will be the sixth and final book in the Ghost Armor series. I am 53,000 words into that as of this recording, which puts me about halfway through, give or take. I'm also 6,000 words into Blade of Flames, which will be the first book in my new epic fantasy series that I will begin once Ghost in the Siege is out. In audiobook news, Shield of Power--recording for it is underway. That will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills and hopefully that will be out in probably towards the end of September sometime, if all goes well. 00:01:49 Question of the Week Now let's move on to Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question: what is your favorite book you've read in 2025 so far? No wrong answers, obviously. The inspiration for this question was that June 30th was the halfway point of the year, which naturally inspires both reflection and some mandatory bookkeeping. Mary says: Witch Hat Atelier Volume 13 by Kamome Shirahama (which I probably mispronounced). After having read the rest of the series, of course. Juana says: Hidden Nature by Nora Roberts. Jonathan T. says: The Genesis Enigma: Why the Bible is Scientifically Accurate. This book is like my favorite nonfiction book so far of the year, while my favorite in the fiction category is likely Hardy Boys Casefiles: Dead On Target. Roger says: Just finished the latest in the Magelands Series, The Lost Ascendant. Really good, but a long series-even longer than yours, Jonathan. Gary says: It wasn't published in 2025 (I'm tragically behind the times) but Murtaugh by Christopher Paolini. Lynda says: Sunset by Sharon Sala. Denny says: Not sure if Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archives: Wind and Truth counts. It was released in December of 2024, but it's the newest book I've read. John K. says: My favorite book so far is by new indie author, J.L. Odom, By Blood By Salt. It's in line with apparently my favorite genre of MC called (I can't tell if this is disparaging or not) “competency porn” where the main character is well, uber competent. For myself, I think my favorite book of the year so far for 2025 would be The Icarus Coda by Timothy Zahn, which wraps up his excellent Icarus sci-fi mystery series after 25 years. So I definitely recommend you check out the Icarus series if you get a chance and if you're looking for other interesting things to read, apparently we have a few recommendations for you as well. 00:03:29 Main Topic: How I Finally Finished the Stealth and Spells Online Trilogy Now let's move on to our main topic this week. How I finally finished the Stealth and Spells Online trilogy with the last book, Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest. I'm very grateful to everyone who read the trilogy and enjoyed it. All told, it took about 10 months to write Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest, from September of 2024 to July 2025, when I finally published it. So that's a lot longer than it takes for me to usually write a book. So what took so long? Well, a lot of things went wrong. Let's look back. Towards the end of 2022, I decided I wanted to try something a little different, so I settled on LitRPG, which seemed promising because it's pretty popular. For the story, I had an idea of a software developer who was fired from a virtual reality MMORPG once he realized it was dangerous and how he starts playing the game to uncover the proof he needs of the corporation's evil plans. I also had why I thought would be a clever idea. The game would be based on my Frostborn books. Like, it's set 700 years in the future and some interstellar scout discovered the Frostborn books on a wrecked colony ship, and then the evil corporation built the game around them. I decided the game would be called Sevenfold Sword Online, which meant it was the logical name for the series. So I wrote Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation and published it in February of 2023. And alas, it didn't do particularly well. A couple of problems became immediately apparent. First, and perhaps foremost, the title was causing confusion. People assumed it was connected to my Sevenfold Sword series and was in some way a sequel to that series, which it wasn't. Second, people were confused and wondered if the Ridmark Arban and Calliande Arban NPCs in the game were the actual characters from the Frostborn, Sevenfold Sword, and Dragontiarna books. They weren't. But in comedy, there's a saying that if you have to explain the joke you've already lost. I suppose a parallel conclusion would be that if you have to explain the characters are NPCs in the game world based on your books 700 years in the future, then the concept of the book is probably a bit too abstract. Second, the book didn't really appeal to a majority of my regular readers who prefer epic fantasy from me. Case in point- when I published Half-Elven Thief in December 2023, in its first month it did 66% of what Stealth and Spells Online: Creation has done in the entire three and a half years it has been available, and I'm recording this on August 1st, 2025. So in its first month, Half-Elven Thief did two thirds of what Creation did the entire three and a half years it's been published. In its lifetime, Half-Elven Thief has sold 250% more than Stealth and Spells Online: Creation, and it's been out for ten and a half fewer months than Creation. Clearly, the majority of my regular readers prefer epic fantasy over LitRPG. Despite these setbacks, I continued onward and published Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling in February of 2024. It did slightly worse than Creation. So for the rest of 2024, I on and off tried a bunch of things to improve how the series fared. To avoid confusion, I changed the title from Sevenfold Sword Online to Stealth and Spells Online, which it currently is. I redid the cover art, I changed the description, all the usual things for improving a series, and none of it ever really worked. I could never quite turn a profit when advertising the book. During these experiments, I realized I had fundamentally misread the LitRPG market because the three most popular kinds of LitRPG are: 1. Portal fantasy, when the protagonist falls through a portal and ends up in another world that runs on MMORPG style rules for whatever reason. 2. Isekai. The character dies and is reborn in a world that runs on MMORPG style rules. You'll see this in books with titles like I Died and was Reborn as a Level One Healer, something like that. 3. System Apocalypse. The world ends and is recreated as a living MMORPG, usually overseen by an all powerful “game system” (hence the name). The system can be created by gods or incomprehensibly powerful space aliens and is often malevolent. Dungeon Crawler Carl, where Earth is destroyed and remade into an MMORPG system as part of a sadistic alien game show is probably the most well-known example of this particular subgenre. The problem is that Stealth and Spells Online fits into none of these popular subgenres. I joke that I tried to write a LitRPG, but it ended up as a sci-fi thriller. I mean “software developer fighting sinister corporation's evil plans” is a sci-fi cyberpunk story, not a LitRPG. So I was trying to tell a story ill-suited for that particular genre, like attempting to write a cozy contemporary mystery in the format of an epic Arthurian fantasy quest. Like that idea could potentially work, but it probably wouldn't. With that realization, I had three choices about how to proceed. 1. Leave Stealth and Spells Online unfinished and never speak of it again. 2. Unpublish Stealth and Spells Online and never speak of it again. 3. Find a way to finish Stealth and Spells Online in a satisfactory fashion with a single book because I didn't want to write a long series that sold poorly. I disliked Options One and Two, partly for reasons of professional pride and partly because it's bad to get a reputation in the fantasy genre for leaving series unfinished. You don't want to leave readers hanging longer than is necessary. The tricky part for Option Three was I had originally planned Stealth and Spells Online to be like seven or eight books, and I was only two books into what I had outlined for the story. An additional, potentially major real life problem was that the Stealth and Spells Online books sold badly enough to seriously tank book sales in the month they were released. Like both February 2023 and February 2024 were some of my weakest sales months in the past decade. So that meant I needed an outline for the final book that would discard all the planned subplots and focus entirely on the main plot. I also needed to write the book as a side project and not a main project because I knew it probably would not sell well. Ideally, it would come out in the same month as a much stronger seller like one of the Shield War books. So in October of 2024, I started chipping away at what would become Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest at 500 words a day. I would write 250 words before going to the gym in the morning and then 250 more words after dinner. During the normal workday, my main focus was on whatever book in the Shield War, Ghost Armor, Cloak Mage, and Half-Elven Thief series I was writing at the time. (As I've said before, having five unfinished series at the time is way too many, which is why I spent summer 2025 trying to get that number down.) But I did my 250 words in the morning and my 250 words after dinner almost every day. I just kept chipping away at it. Finally, in July of 2025, I was very nearly to the end of the book. After I published Shield of Power, I decided I was far enough along to make Final Quest my main project. Turns out I actually was pretty far along, since I only needed to write 3,000 more words to finish the book. Two rounds of editing and some new scenes later (I added a bunch of stuff since I thought the original ending was incomplete) and I published the book in July of 2025. It turned out reasonably well. People seemed to like the ending and find it satisfactory (at least those who read it). Final Quest sold slightly better than its predecessors. But to be honest, Shield of Power has generated sales in its first three days equal to what Final Quest did in its first two weeks. So I'm grateful for everyone who read the trilogy or listened to the two audiobooks. I'm really grateful that you read it or listened to it and enjoyed it. But in all honesty, I'm glad to be done with the trilogy. I've always been kind of sad when I finished my other series, especially the big ones, but with Stealth and Spells Online, I'm just relieved to be done and that I don't have to think about it very much anymore. It's easier to promote a finished trilogy than an unfinished series. Probably I'm going to make the first book free every three months, run some ads to it while it's free, and that will be that. I just signed up with C.J. McAllister a few days ago to do the audiobook version of Final Quest (and he did a very good job on the first two books in the trilogy), so eventually we'll probably have a Stealth and Spells Online: The Complete Trilogy audiobook, since audiobook bundles always do well and I expect a complete trilogy audiobook bundle would likewise do well. Amusingly, I realized that to finish this book, I essentially followed my own advice that I've been giving for years. I always say on this podcast and my blog that you can finish a novel if you just keep chipping away at it and small efforts add up over time. Final Quest turned out to be about 117,000 words, and I mostly got there 500 words at a time. Do I regret writing Stealth and Spells Online? No. But obviously if I had to do it all over again, I would definitely do some things differently. Will I ever return to writing in the LitRPG genre? Probably not. I listed all the popular subgenres of LitRPG earlier, and while I don't have anything against any of those subgenres, I just don't have any particular interest in writing a story that revolves around those tropes. For all that my books tend to be escapist, I always need to have at least a touchstone of reality in them so they make sense to me. Characters like Wire, Admiral Winterholt, and Alexander Maskell could definitely have their real-life (even contemporary) equivalents. LitRPG story tropes in general seem to be about a flight from reality. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but it's not something I'm really interested in writing. I mean, I designed the Andomhaim setting in Frostborn around people who traveled from Sub-Roman Britain in the 500s A.D. to a world where magic is real, so that way I could make real-world historical references. I think if pressed, I could write a pretty good novel in the genres of epic fantasy, science fiction, mystery, thriller, and romance. But I'm not at all sure I could write a good book in the LitRPG subgenres I listed. Honestly, maybe I'm just too old for it. I don't think I encountered an MMORPG for the first time until I was, I think 24 or 25 years old, and I've never actually seriously played one, so it definitely wasn't a formative experience for me the way it was for many LitRPG authors. In fact, if I'm remembering it right, my first serious encounter with an MMORPG was in fact at work when I got an IT support ticket about network throttling, complaining about how long a World of Warcraft update was taking to download. So that is how I finally finished the Stealth and Spells Online trilogy. And once again, thank you to everyone who read and listened to these Stealth and Spells Online trilogy. I hope you found it enjoyable. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

Join host Adrian M. Gibson and guest authors Tao Wong, Shami Stovall and Michael Michel for an Indie Appreciation Month panel on Self-Publishing as a Career. During the panel, Tao, Shami and Michael discuss the long game of self-publishing, including self-publishing as a JOB, being a full-time vs. part-time writer/creative, budgeting and investment for your books, long-term finances and project management, experimenting with release strategies, having purpose and patience, lucrative book formats and publishing platforms, career longevity, income streams, burnout and more.RESOURCES MENTIONED:- The E-Myth Revisited - K-lyticsOUR SPONSOR:Shattered by Nicholas W. Fuller is an action-packed science fantasy novella that introduces readers to the Sanguine Stars universe.Get your copy at ⁠⁠www.nicholaswfuller.com⁠⁠.SHOUTOUT TO THE 'SFF ADDICT' PATRONS:Thank you Ian Patterson, Nicholas W. Fuller, David Hopkins, Luke F. Shepherd, Christopher R. DuBois, Tai, Luke A. Winch, GavinGuile and Ruthstift for supporting us on Patreon at $10+.SUPPORT THE SHOW:- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (for bonus episodes, author readings and more)EMAIL US WITH YOUR QUESTIONS & COMMENTS:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠sffaddictspod@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ABOUT OUR GUESTS:Tao Wong is the author of the System Apocalypse post-apocalyptic LitRPG series, A Thousand Li xianxia fantasy series and more. Find Tao on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠his personal website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Shami Stovall is the award-winning author of the Frith Chronicles, the Astra Academy series, The Chronos Chronicles and more. Find Shami on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠her personal website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Michel is the author of the Dreams of Dust and Steel fantasy series and Way of the Wizard. Find Michael on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠his personal website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ABOUT OUR HOSTS:Adrian M. Gibson is the author of ⁠⁠⁠⁠Mushroom Blues⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.Find Adrian on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠his personal website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.M.J. Kuhn is the author of⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Among Thieves⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and⁠⁠⁠ Thick as Thieves⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.Find M.J. on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠her personal website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.Greta Kelly is the author of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Queen of Days⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, The Frozen Crown and The Seventh Queen.Find Greta on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠her personal website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.FOLLOW SFF ADDICTS:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Linktree⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠MUSIC:Intro: "⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Into The Grid⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠" by MellauSFXOutro: “⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Galactic Synthwave⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠” by DivionAD ATTRIBUTION:- Music: "⁠⁠Infinity Heroes⁠⁠" by JoelFazhari- Video:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Nattgw⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠utopia 36⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠Ingrid North⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠Kmeel.com⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠Vadym_Shapran⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠DC_Studio⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠DC_Studio⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠FrameStock⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠FrameStock⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠Orkidee⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠Pressmaster

Send us a textA throwback from Season 3!! One of our first Authors we interviewed on the POD!!Hop Station Craft BarGet Beer, Cocktails, and fab food while enjoying darts, vintage games. Hop Station is hopping!Coastalos SodasUrban Artifact launched our own hemp derived THC brand Coastalo. Made with real fruit!!Niles BrewingUnique Beers and Cocktails! They host events and trivia weekly. Located in downtown Niles, Michigan!TavourUse our promo code 'DrunksWithBuds' for $10 off your second order.Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the show

Welcome to another episode of Perspective Checks where I sit down with friends and folks from the TTRPG world and discuss what they love about this wonderful hobby!   The second Perspective Checks this month on RPGs and their intersection with creative writing is with Clark R. Rowenson, a.k.a. The Magic Engineer on YouTube, an engineer, author, and writing coach with a lifelong interest in magic systems.   We discuss magic system design, the importance of using the right kind of system for your stories, the explosion in popularity of the LitRPG genre, how both sides can still learn from its inspiration from the tabletop RPG space, and more.    Stay tuned for more about Spawn Point, the first installment in Clark's upcoming LitRPG series A New Eternity about Topha & Nettle!   ----more----   Join the DMs After Dark Discord channel!   2 New MECH Cities Out Now (& Free!)   I made a Ko-Fi if you feel absurdly generous and want to help cover podcast hosting costs & all the upkeep. I'm still working on whether I want to offer anything special over there or just give my extreme gratitude (maybe some stickers or something in the mail) to those who donate, but no pressure whatsoever :)   Where to Follow Rene Plays Games: LinkTree |  BlueSky | Threads | Instagram | Facebook | DMs After Dark Rene's Games: MECH | One Last Quest email: RenePlaysGamesPod@gmail.com   Music in the Episode: Theme Song written & produced by Dan Pomfret | @danfrombothbands

Get ready to dive into the world of Dungeon Crawler Carl! In this episode, Jim explores the fascinating world of this beloved LitRPG Fantasy series, first spoiler-lite, than full on spoil, sharing thoughts on what makes it so addictive. From its unique game mechanics to its charming banter, to it's over-the-top “Carl-ness,” he's covering it all. So, if you're a fan of this book series, or simply LitRPG in general, join us as we delve into the world of this underground gaming sensation.#FantasyForTheAges #Fantasy #SFF #FantasyFiction #LitRPG #DungeonCrawlerCarl #ProgressionFantasy #BookRecommendations #TBR #ReadingRecommendations #booktube #booktuberWant to purchase books/media mentioned in this episode?Dungeon Crawler Carl series: https://t.ly/E9NcyWays to connect with us:Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FantasyForTheAges Follow Jim/Father on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/13848336-jim-scriven Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/jMWyVJ6qKk Follow us on "X": @Fantasy4theAges Follow us on Blue Sky: @fantasy4theages.bsky.socialFollow us on Instagram: fantasy_for_the_ages Follow us on Mastodon: @FantasyForTheAges@nerdculture.de Email us: FantasyForTheAges@gmail.com Check out our merch: https://www.newcreationsbyjen.com/collections/fantasyfortheagesJim's Microphone: Blue Yeti https://tinyurl.com/3shpvhb4 ————————————————————————————Music and video elements licensed under Envato Elements:https://elements.envato.com/

Hey everyone,in our penultimate episode, Neil Hellegers joins me to talk about the importance of Audiobooks to the genre, SAG-AFTRA, and the difference betweenm stage acting and voice acting.This will probably be our last episode for a while. Why? Because I want to have a real highlight for Episode 100, to cap the show off at a great place. That means I'll try to kidnap someone (or several someones) at LitRPGcon next month, and end things with a bang!

Today we're (finally) meeting one of the people who influenced my writing at a very early stage. It's my absolute pleasure to welcome David Corbett!To celebrate the occasion, we ventured a bit deeper into political waters in the Patreon section, but mostly we stuck to the main topic: Writing. David is a classically trained writer, and I found it absolutely fascinating to compare notes, find similarities, and learn something new. I hope you will, as well!

In this episode, the hosts discuss and grade the LitRPG series Dungeon Crawler Carl. Hosts: Trevor, Jay, and Josh

Hey everyone,this week, we got the one and only Macronomicon joining us. This has been a very focused episode, with lots to be learned about the craft, so I hope you can take away some juicy tidbits.That's not to say we didn't spend a lot of time talking about the genesis of Macro's stories, though! We certainly did!

Today I return to the LitRPG pandemonium of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, coming at you with my review of book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook. Rising stakes, believe it or not, even in the midst of a dungeon game show that's to the death! Carl, Donut, Mondo, and more are through into yet another level, and making it any further seems impossible! Here's Jim's spoiler-lite review, with full spoil commentary at the very end, so stick around all the way through if you've already read this title.#FantasyForTheAges #readingrecommendations #LitRPG #Fantasy #DungeonCrawlerCarl #TBR #ToBeRead #ReadingList #SFF #booktube #booktuberWant to purchase books/media mentioned in this episode?The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook: https://t.ly/xy2bYWays to connect with us:Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FantasyForTheAges Follow Jim/Father on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/13848336-jim-scriven Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/jMWyVJ6qKk Follow us on "X": @Fantasy4theAges Follow us on Blue Sky: @fantasy4theages.bsky.socialFollow us on Instagram: fantasy_for_the_ages Follow us on Mastodon: @FantasyForTheAges@nerdculture.de Email us: FantasyForTheAges@gmail.com Check out our merch: https://www.newcreationsbyjen.com/collections/fantasyfortheagesJim's Microphone: Blue Yeti https://tinyurl.com/3shpvhb4 ————————————————————————————Music and video elements licensed under Envato Elements:https://elements.envato.com/

This week, we welcome returning guest Clark (C.R.) Rowenson, who has come to discuss his new LitRPG novel Spawn Point. Join us as we discuss the his new book, the LitRPG genre as a whole, and some ways to adapt LitRPG into your tabletop games (and vice versa). You can preorder Spawn Point for Kindle here (Release date Oct. 24th, 2025): https://www.amazon.com/Spawn-Point-New-Eternity-Book-ebook/dp/B0DVF4LX4N/ You can find Clark's other work on his website (crrowenson.com), his Patreon (patreon.com/crrowenson), or his YouTube channel, The Magic Engineer (youtube.com/@themagicengineer5314). Clark was last on way back in Episode 48, talking about his (then new) book The Magic System Blueprint. You can find it here: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-a349q-10a6743   Our website is live! Head on over to undercommontaste.com to find links to all of our social media, streaming sites, Patreon, Itch store, and Discord. Our theme song is Massacre Anne, written and performed by Mary Crowell, and used with permission. You can find Mary's work online at marycrowell.bandcamp.com, or on Patreon at patreon.com/DrMaryCCrowell. Our logo was illustrated by David Sutherland. You can find David's work online at instagram.com/wilex_73, or on DeviantArt at deviantart.com/davidsutherland.

The Blasters & Blades PodcastWow, this was a fun chat! We got nerdy about nerdom past, the shows and books that made us and the stuff we're reading now. Then we got to chat with a #USMC #Veteran, #LitRPG author Sean Oswald about his Welcome To The Multiverse Series. The covers rocked, the book series sounds awesome, and I can't wait to read it for myself! We managed to avoid the spoilers… barely… so, what are you waiting for? This was a fun interview, so go check out this episode. Lend us your eyes and ears, you won't be sorry!! Join us for a fun show! We're just a couple of nerdy Army veterans geeking out on things that go "abracadabra," "pew," "zoom," "boop-beep" and rhyme with Science Fiction & Fantasy. Co-Hosts: JR Handley (Author) (Grunt)Nick Garber (Comic Book Artist) (Super Grunt)Madam Stabby Stab (Uber Fan) (Horror Nerd)We work for free, so if you wanna throw a few pennies our way there is a linked Buy Me A Coffee site where you can do so. Just mention the podcast in the comments when you donate, and I'll keep the sacred bean water boiling!Support the Show: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/AuthorJRHandley Our LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/blastersandbladespodcast Today's SponsorGeminis Crossing by Arlo Adams: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P7Y7L3D Coffee Brand Coffee Affiliate Support the Show: https://coffeebrandcoffee.com/?ref=y4GWASiVorJZDb Discount Code: PodcastGrunts Coupon Code Gets you 10% off Welcome to the Multiverse Series by Sean Oswald: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CKVDB1VB Follow Sean Oswald on social mediaSean's Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Sean-Oswald/author/B082P3914C Sean's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Sean-Oswald-Author-100049725114081/ Sean's Publisher: https://aethonbooks.com/2025/02/28/author-spotlight-sean-oswald/ Sean's Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/soswald73/ Sean's Discord: https://discord.gg/Ja6kzHXKRv Sean's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/user?u=39529448 Sean's GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/20188216.Sean_Oswald #scifishenanigans #scifishenaniganspodcast #bbp #blastersandblades #blastersandbladespodcast #podcast #scifipodcast #fantasypodcast #scifi #fantasy #books #rpg #comics #fandom #literature #comedy #veteran #army #armyranger #ranger #scififan #redshirts #scifiworld #sciencefiction #scifidaily #scificoncept #podcastersofinstagram #scificons #podcastlife #podcastsofinstagram #scifibooks #awardwinningscifi #newepisode #podcastersofinstagram #podcastaddict #podcast #scifigeek #scifibook #sfv #scifivisionaries #firesidechat #chat #panel #fireside #religionquestion #coffee #tea #coffeeortea #CoffeeBrandCoffee #JRHandley #NickGarber #MadamStabby #SeanOswald #WelcomeToTheMultiverseSeries #starwars #jedi #georgelucas #lucasfilms #startrek #trekkie #firefly #serenity #browncoat #wheeloftime #wot #robertjordan #brandonsanderson #gameofthrones #got #grrm #georgerrmartin #ChroniclesofNarnia #CSLewis #LitRPG #Apocalypse #GameLit #Stargate #StargateSG1 #StargateAtlantis #StargateUniverse #ElderScrolls #Skyrim #Morrowind #USMC #Marine #Triceratops #Dinobots #Transformers #Stegosaurus #Chai #IndianChai #MarineCorps #CrayonEater #workethic #EdgarRiceBurrough #Tarzan #JohnCarterOfMars #EncyclopediaBrown #SusanBCooper #MargaretWeiss #DragonLance #TracyHickman #TheDarkIsRising #AethonPublishing #Pathfander #D&D #DandD #DungeonsAndDragons #Dungeons&Dragons #videogames #ttrpg #tabletoprollplayinggame #Isekai

In this week's episode, we take a look at the major self-publishing platforms that I use, and examine the pros and cons of each. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress, Book #8 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: DOOM50 The coupon code is valid through June 24, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 253 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May 30th, 2025, and today we are looking at the current major self-publishing platforms and what they offer indie authors. Before we get to our main topic, we'll have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing projects.   So let's start with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress (book number eight in the Dragonskull series, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That code is DOOM50. And as always, we will have the coupon code and the links to the store in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through June 24th, 2025. So if you are setting out on summer travels this summer and you need an audiobook to listen to while you're in the car or plane, we have got you covered. So now for an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. Ghost in the Corruption (as I mentioned last week) is now out and available at all the ebook stores: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and Payhip. It is selling well. So thank you all for that. Now that Ghost in the Corruption is finished, what am I working on next? Well, back in 2023, I finished the Dragonskull and The Silent Order series back to back, so I declared Summer 2023 to be my Summer of Finishing Things. Well, it looks like Summer 2025 is going to be the Super Summer of Finishing Things because I intend to finish three series back to back.   First up is Shield of Power, the sixth and final book of The Shield War series. As of this publishing, I am 26,000 words into it, which puts me on Chapter 6 of 29. So I think it's going to end up being around 100,000-110,000 words long, and I am hoping it will be out in June, though it might slip to July depending on how things go. Once that is done, the next one up will be Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest, which will be the third and very definitely final book of the Stealth and Spells Online trilogy. Believe it or not, I have been working on Final Quest on the side for so long that I passed the 100,000 word mark in that book this week. In fact, it's been a side project for so long that I don't remember how long I've been working on it, and I had to look up the metadata to check that I indeed started chipping away on it on October 18th, 2024. So I am very pleased that I'm nearly done with the rough draft and because of that reason, if all goes well, it'll come out very quickly after Shield of Power, since I think the rough draft will end up at about 125,000 to 130,000 words or in that neighborhood. Once Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest is finished, I will then write Ghost in the Siege, which will be the sixth and final book of the Ghost Armor series. I am 1,500 words into that and hoping for that to come out in August or September, if all goes well. Once The Shield War, Stealth and Spells Online, and Ghost Armor are finished, I will finally be free to return to the Rivah and Nadia series. I realized that through all of 2024 and the first half of 2025, I had five unfinished series at the same time, and that was just too much for me to keep track of as a writer, and I think it may have been too much for the readers because it was too much of a wait between the different series as I worked my way through them. So five series at the same time is too much, so hence the Super Summer of Finishing Things. Going forward, I've decided that three unfinished series at the same time will be my maximum, which after the Super Summer of Finishing Things will be Cloak Mage, Half-Elven Thief, and a new epic fantasy series that I will set in the realm of Owyllain.   In audiobook news, Brad Wills started working on Shield of Battle this week and Hollis McCarthy started working on Ghost in the Corruption, so hopefully before probably about July or thereabouts, we will have those audiobooks available for you to listen to. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects.   00:03:49 Main Topic of the Week: Self-Publishing Platforms for Ebooks [Note: Information in this Episode is Very Likely to Change]   So now let's move on to our main topic for the week, which is the main self-publishing platforms for ebooks. Today we will do a brief overview of the self-publishing platforms I currently use: Amazon/KDP, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, and Draft2Digital/Smashwords. The reason I wanted to do this is because there are many scammy platforms for self-publishing out there, but fortunately there are also many legitimate ones. Today we'll compare several of the most popular ones for ebooks. Just to make things easier for comparison, we'll be using the term platform to discuss both retailers and aggregators and we're not going to talk about options for self-publishing print or audio formats today. We're going to focus solely on ebooks.   First of all, what should you look for in a publishing platform? The first thing is to make sure you retain complete ownership of your content in all formats. Some of these scammer ones try to claim all rights to anything you try to post or sell through them, so that is definitely a red flag to watch out for. Make sure that you understand any exclusivity requirements of any programs that you sign up for such as KDP Select, such as if other formats like audio are also included in their requirements, how long exclusivity lasts, et cetera. If the platform requires exclusivity, that is definitely something to pay attention to. Make sure you do your research carefully to understand how pricing, royalties, and payments work on each individual platform. Sometimes some of them will pay quarterly, some of them pay monthly, and some of them pay you last month's royalties at the end of the month. Some of them like Amazon run like two months behind.   Finally, and this is a big one, you should not have to pay any money in order to upload your work. If they are asking for money upfront, it is probably a scam. Now, there are some aggregators that don't take a percentage and instead charge you a yearly fee. I'm not talking about them in this podcast episode because I don't use them, but they are out there. One example would be Book Funnel, which does charge a yearly fee for you to use but provides a valuable service in being a backend for running your own store on like Payhip or Shopify, and there's a couple of other useful services in that way, but they're not a storefront and they don't take a percentage of any royalties. They just charge a yearly fee. So they're not the topic with this episode.   All the platforms I've talked about today do not have any fees in order to upload. Reputable sites like Amazon or Kobo will instead take a percentage of each book's sale. It's also good to have a few realistic expectations before you start using self-publishing platforms, and one of them is that the platform is not a marketer. For example, many people complain that KDP doesn't showcase their books and they get lost in the millions of books available. However, none of these services are promising that you'll make the front page of their site just by publishing there. It's a common delusion among new indie authors that when you publish your first book, that's all you have to do and people will flock to it. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.   In fact, since Amazon makes a small fortune off book ads, it's not in their interest to give away screen space for free, and this isn't to knock on Amazon, that's just the way the retail industry works. For example, if you go into a Target or a Walmart or another big box retailer, note the products that are prominently displayed on the aisle displays or the endcaps of the aisles. They didn't just get there randomly. The manufacturers of those products paid big money to Amazon and Target and Walmart and the other big box retailers to have their products featured there. In many cases, online commerce is no different.   Getting your book uploaded onto a platform is just the first step. Promoting and marketing the book is up to you and strategies for those will vary based on which ones you choose to use. For example, if you choose to make your work exclusive to just one platform, it's not a good idea to run Facebook ads in countries where that platform either doesn't exist or where it's not terribly popular. Today we're going to be just focusing on comparing the platforms, not how to best to market from them. So what are the options?   #1: First up is the most common platform people use and it's the 800 pound gorilla in the self-publishing space, and that is Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. And what are the pros and cons of KDP?   Pro: They are the biggest force in ebook publishing in many countries, including the United States. Some authors find that as much as 80 to 95% of their ebook sales come from Amazon, even if they are not exclusive with Amazon. For myself, it's usually about 50 to 60% of my sales on any given month are from Amazon and the rest come from the other retailers.   Heavy readers are generally very familiar with the Kindle Store interface and Library setup, and many readers are kind of locked into Amazon because they own Kindle devices, subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, and have large Kindle Libraries. So those are all the pros of publishing with KDP.   Cons: If you're expecting a large portion of your sales to come from the print version of your book or if print sales are very important to you, be aware that many bookstores and libraries either can't or won't buy print books from Amazon, so you should find an additional platform for the print version such as Ingram Spark or maybe Barnes & Noble's print division. One big concern about going exclusive with Amazon is that you're losing readers who don't have Kindle books in their countries, people who are boycotting Amazon for a variety of reasons, people who are locked into another platform such as Apple or Kobo, or people who want to self-archive their ebooks since Amazon doesn't allow that anymore. If you're already wide, you'll have to look carefully at what percentage of your sales are non-Amazon and if this percentage is an amount you'd be comfortable risking losing in order to be exclusive. Occasionally authors do complain about the customer service available to KDP, especially if it's urgent. For myself, I've not personally had any huge problems with KDP customer service. That said, I think you should expect a lead time of about one to two business days on anything you ask because I usually go through the email form.   Does KDP offer a subscription service? Yes. Kindle Unlimited (KU) readers pay a set amount and can read an unlimited number of books each month, although they're limited as to how many they can have in their library at any one time. Promotions happen regularly, usually based around big sales like Prime Day, and it can make a subscription as cheap as $0.99 for a three month period. Some also receive free subscriptions by buying certain Amazon products such as a new Kindle or Kindle Fire.   The downside of being in Kindle Unlimited is the exclusivity. You can't be in KU without being exclusive with Amazon, or at least the specific book in question has to be exclusive. Not all of your books have to be exclusive, and many authors such as myself will usually put one series in KU and then make sure everything else is wide. You must agree to be exclusive with them for ninety days and that time period is renewable.   What does KDP pay in terms of royalty? For $2.99 to $9.99, they give you 70% of the sale price. Under $2.99 and above $9.99, it's 35%. So that is sort of an encouragement from Amazon to price your ebooks in the $2.99 to $9.99 range. Currently I price new novels at $4.99 and do short stories at $0.99 cents.   What do I do? I have all of my titles available through KDP. I have a smaller portion of my collection exclusive through KDP Select/KU, and I have only recently increased that amount of Select titles due to the economic downturn. I suspect that KU users are likely to hold onto their subscriptions while cutting other expenses because honestly, KU is a pretty good deal for readers and the monthly subscription costs is about the same as one tradpub frontlist ebook, but with a KU subscription, they could read thousands of books for the same price. The value of KU is really very strong for frequent romance, LitRPG, science fiction, and fantasy readers. There's a strong population in the KU subscriber base often referred to as binge readers. They care more about variety, discovering new books, and the ability to read a lot over the ability to read specific authors or stories.   So overall, I think if you are self-publishing and even if you don't like Amazon very much or don't plan to go exclusive, it's still in your best interest to publish your ebook with them, even if you are wide and intend to do all the other retailers just because Amazon really is the biggest ebook platform out there at the moment. #2: Now, the next self-publishing platform we're going to look at is Barnes & Noble Press, which as the name implies, belongs to Barnes & Noble. The Pros: some people are never, ever going to let go of their Nooks or they already have a large personal ebook library through the Nook so they feel locked into that platform. These readers are the majority of people buying ebooks through Barnes & Noble, but fortunately that group tends to read a lot. There's also a lot of trust in Barnes & Noble as a brand, and that inspires people to continue buying from them.   In fact, for a while in the indie author space at the end of the 2010s and the start of the 2020s, it was a regular prediction that Barnes & Noble was going to go out of business soon, but then the company was bought by a private equity firm, and while private equity firms often have a deserved bad reputation for stripping a company of assets and then selling it off at a bargain basement price (such as the fate of Red Lobster), that does not seem to be the case of what happened with Barnes & Noble and the company really has been strengthening in recent years. So they may be here to stay for a while.   The downsides of publishing with Barnes & Noble Press is that Barnes & Noble is relatively a minor player in the ebook market, though usually in the top four of most indie author ebook sales if they're wide. They have shifted their focus to selling print books instead of Nook devices, especially in the retail space.   Do they offer a subscription service? They do not. However, nothing about Barnes & Noble requires exclusivity, which is nice, and the royalty structure is pretty good. It's 70% over all titles over $0.99. So if you want, you could price your ebook at $0.99 or $19.99 and still make 70%, which you couldn't do with those prices on Amazon.     #3: The next self-publishing platform we'll look at is Kobo Writing Life, which is the ebook platform to publish on Kobo, which is owned by Rakuten. Pros: Kobo is strong in the international market and will help you to reach readers in many countries. Based on my sales data, in Canada and Australia, Kobo is significantly bigger than Amazon for ebook sales. Kobo has also had a surge of recent media attention in the US as people seek out alternatives to Amazon and Kindle devices.   The Con of Kobo, and this is a fairly small one, is that their US market share is still fairly small compared to Amazon or Barnes & Noble or some of the others. But as I mentioned, they're a lot stronger in Canada and Australia, and they do reach a lot of different countries, more than Amazon does.   Does Kobo have a subscription service? Yes, Kobo Plus. Kobo Plus is significantly less expensive than Kindle Unlimited, and there's an additional tier that allows you to add audiobook content to the plan. The library isn't quite as extensive as KU though, though. I should note that in the years since Kobo has been introduced, I'd say about half of my revenue from Kobo (sometimes 60% of my revenue from Kobo) comes from Kobo Plus and not from direct ebook sales. So it's getting to the point where the majority of their ebook revenue I suspect, is coming from Kobo Plus and not direct Kobo sales.   Do they require exclusivity? No, which is another strong selling point for Kobo Plus. For their royalty structure, ebooks over $2.99, you get 70% and any books over below $2.99, you get 45%, which is a more generous term than Amazon in terms of the royalty rate for below $2.99 and above $9.99.   So what do I do? I currently use it as one of the platforms for my ebooks. It's been a pretty strong seller for me consistently over the years, and every Kobo book that I have is also available in Kobo Plus, which probably explains the revenue split I was talking about earlier. #4: The next platform we'll look at is Draft2Digital/Smashwords, which we'll do as one because Draft2Digital and Smashwords are in the process of merging. Draft2Digital is technically what's called an aggregator, where you upload your book and then they can publish on a variety of different platforms for you, and in exchange, they take a small cut of the sales. Draft2Digital is, in my opinion, probably the most effective way to get your ebooks through Apple and Smashwords. Apple does have its own direct uploading service, but I've never used it because there are a bit too many hoops to jump through.   Draft2Digital does, as I mentioned, have a way to publish on multiple storefronts at once while managing uploads and sales reporting through just one interface. They're not a storefront in and of themselves, although since Draft2Digital does own Smashwords, Smashwords essentially acts as their storefront for them. Although Draft2Digital lists Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble as an option, most authors will upload to these sites separately, and in fact, that's what I do for myself.   The Pros of Draft2Digital is that it's a definite time savings using Draft2Digital to publish across multiple platforms, especially with platforms like Apple that are more difficult or time consuming to learn. This is also a convenient way to make your work accessible to library platforms like Overdrive/Libby, Hoopla, and Bibliotheca, if that is important to you. Library sales have never been a huge priority of mine, but I've never been opposed to them either, so I usually just flip those switches on and then don't think about it again.   The Cons for Draft2Digital are that there was a period after the Smashwords migration where they received complaints about customer service and difficulty in setting up tax information, though I think that is mostly ironed out now.   One potential hazard for Draft2Digital with a very specific subset of writers is that if you are a writer of, shall we say, very hard erotica, the sort that ends up in very restricted categories on most stores, you will probably have trouble publishing through Draft2Digital. This is not, however, a problem that's unique to Draft2Digital. Amazon has what is called the “erotica dungeon”, where if you publish certain kinds of, like we said, very harsh erotica, your book isn't searchable on the Amazon store. You can link to it directly, but it will never show up on any search results. Kobo in particular has had problems with erotica.   Back in the 2010s, Kobo was also distributing ebooks to some British retailers, and these British retailers suddenly got upset when they noticed that these kinds of hard erotica were showing up on their store pages, which was not a good look for the company. And so there was a kerfuffle until that was all sorted out. My frank opinion with that is if you are writing these kinds of erotica, the big stores and Draft2Digital will never be on your side, and so you are better off pursuing a sort of a Patreon/running your own store on Shopify or Payhip strategy, but that is a bit of a digression.   So in terms of royalties, Draft2Digital takes 10% of the book's retail price per copy sold, which is in addition to whatever amount is taken by the specific storefront. So you are paying a bit of money in exchange for convenience for just uploading your book to Draft2Digital and having it push out the book to all the different stores for you.   What I do is I use Draft2Digital for Apple mainly because for a while I was using Smashwords, but Smashwords in the 2010s was a bit more persnickety than is now, and you needed to prepare a specially formatted doc file to publish on Smashwords and sometimes getting it through the Smashwords processing onto Apple was a bit of a pain. Draft2Digital took epub files, which are much easier to work with, and after a while I switched over all my Apple publishing to Draft2Digital entirely. So that's why I use Draft2Digital for Apple and for various library services that tend to be a minor amount of sales. Because of the difficulties on publishing direct to Apple, I do find that that 10% is good trade off in terms of selling books on Apple for me.   #5: Now onto Google Play's ebook self-publishing platform, which is, I think its full name is the Google Books Partner Center, which lets you publish books to the Google Play Store for sale on Android devices.   The Pros are that for writers interested in the international market, Google Play is another strong choice for a platform since the international mobile device market is very Android heavy. The iPhone (Apple) tends to be concentrated mainly in the US and a few of the wealthier countries like the UK and Canada, but Android has a much more international reach in general than the iPhone. Google Play also has some interesting promotional options for ebooks, such as offering the buyer a chance to subscribe to a specific series.   The cons are that some authors report that their sales reporting doesn't always consistently generate reports, and others are annoyed that it only generates a CSV file, (which isn't that much of a hardship for people who are familiar with Excel).   For myself, I found that there is a bit of a reporting lag on Google Play where it will sometimes take as long as five or six days for sales to show up on the dashboard, though usually it's only a delay of two days, though sometimes during the month you'll get these bigger lags and sometimes processing new material on the Google Play Store can be slow, and it can sometimes take two to three days for things to appear, though it usually gets worked out in the end. Does Google Play have a subscription service? It does not, nor does it require exclusivity, which is another point in its favor. And the royalties, the data is quite nice here. It is 70% for all price points in the countries listed on their support page, which only excludes a handful of countries like India, South Korea, and Japan (because of currency conversion regions or other local laws).   So those are the ebook publishing platforms that I currently use, and because I use them myself, I would recommend them. Hopefully that is helpful to you as you are looking for places to self-publish your book as you set out to become an indie author.   So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the backup episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

Hey everyone,It's my absolute pleasure to introduce my good friend Andy to the world stage!Besides being awesome, he writes a wonderful story called "The Jade Shadows Must Die", and has been a long-time supporter of the podcast. In this episode, we're talking about his writing process, why LitRPG is so well-suited as a haven for burnt-out romance authors, and how he overcame the daunting task of editing his entire novel in a week!Read his novel here!https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/117944/the-jade-shadows-must-die-xianxia-inspired-litrpg-------------------------------------------We have our own website now! It has all the info you need, a merch store, and more!https://critrpgpodcast.com/If you want to listen to the entire podcast without ads, PLUS at least ONE HOUR of additional content for EVERY EPISODE, consider subscribing to our Patreon!https://www.patreon.com/critrpgpodcastFind my own books and other links herehttps://linktr.ee/madix3I am active in these Discords and Groups! Check them out if you want to discuss LitRPG and progression Fantasy novels!https://linktr.ee/critrpglinksFor business inquiries: critrpgpodcast.social@gmail.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/critrpg-a-podcast-about-litrpg-progression-fantasy-and-their/donations

Hey everyone,This week on the CritRPG Podcast, we talk about BUNNIES. Joining me with an absolutely not horrifying avatar is Bedivere the Mad, for a conversation that spans from the value of ideas to publishing advice.-------------------------------------------We have our own website now! It has all the info you need, a merch store, and more!https://critrpgpodcast.com/If you want to listen to the entire podcast without ads, PLUS at least ONE HOUR of additional content for EVERY EPISODE, consider subscribing to our Patreon!https://www.patreon.com/critrpgpodcastFind my own books and other links herehttps://linktr.ee/madix3I am active in these Discords and Groups! Check them out if you want to discuss LitRPG and progression Fantasy novels! https://linktr.ee/critrpglinksFor business inquiries: critrpgpodcast.social@gmail.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/critrpg-a-podcast-about-litrpg-progression-fantasy-and-their/donations

Is Dungeon Crawler Carl the epitome of LitRPG perfection? In this episode, we dive into the world of LitRPG and explore what makes Dungeon Crawler Carl stand out from the rest. From its engaging storyline to its unique gameplay mechanics, we'll examine the elements that make this book a must-read for fans of the genre. Whether you're a seasoned LitRPG enthusiast or just discovering the world of literary RPGs, this episode is for you. So, join us as we delve into the world of Dungeon Crawler Carl and find out what makes it a true masterpiece of LitRPG literature.#FantasyForTheAges #readingrecommendations #LitRPG #DungeonCrawler #fantasy #SFF #FantasyFiction #TBR #ToBeRead #ReadingList #booktube #booktuberWant to purchase books/media mentioned in this episode?Dungeon Crawler Carl: https://t.ly/8AzjnHe Who Fights with Monsters: https://t.ly/Noem5 Ways to connect with us:Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FantasyForTheAges Follow Jim/Father on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/13848336-jim-scriven Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/jMWyVJ6qKk Follow us on "X": @Fantasy4theAges Follow us on Blue Sky: @fantasy4theages.bsky.socialFollow us on Instagram: fantasy_for_the_ages Follow us on Mastodon: @FantasyForTheAges@nerdculture.de Email us: FantasyForTheAges@gmail.com Check out our merch: https://www.newcreationsbyjen.com/collections/fantasyfortheagesJim's Microphone: Blue Yeti https://tinyurl.com/3shpvhb4 ————————————————————————————Music and video elements licensed under Envato Elements:https://elements.envato.com/

Welcome to the 96th Episode of the ABC Pod the Adult Book Club where we drink and we read things. This episodefeatures Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. Discussion of the book starts at the 12th minute. Because this book is a LITRPG and not a conventional act based set up, there is no spoilers section or maybe spoilers throughout depending on how you look at it. We start by discussing our who/what/where and then move into questions about specific events and secondary characters. We make a few guesses at where we think this series is headed and then finish with Russ' final recap from his Wheel of Time journey and revealing what's on the next episode. Enjoy! 

Hey everyone!This week, we got Spencer Walther, author of Blood Curse Academia joining us on the podcast! In one of the more craft focused shows I've done, we're covering a broad set of writing advice that we usually skip over.Hope you guys enjoy it as much as I have. Also, Hi again Spencer, and thanks for saving the pod!

Hey everyone!This week in the CritRPG podcast we have the one, the only, the true Andrew Rowe! And let me tell you, this episode is an absolute banger! We're talking about everything from Video Games to Writing Advice, and it's easily one of my most favorite conversations I had on this pod so far.Hope you're going to enjoy it as much as I, and to see you next time!

For this episode of Season 4, I had the pleasure of interviewing novelist and script writer Richard Sparks. Richard and I had a terrific conversation about his new New Rock Series, his inspiration from his past gaming, and what the genre of fantasy and LitRPG. I had a great time chatting with Richard about his characters and why he chose the classes that he did for book one New Rock, New Role. We also discussed the magic, worldbuilding, and other pieces that went into the first book of this series along with his plans for book 2. Make sure to check out his book and social links in the space below and don't forget to subscribe to our Youtube Channel! Author Amazon Profile Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Richard-Sparks/author/B0CPBP7ZHN?_encoding=UTF8&ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true Author Website: https://richardsparks.com/about-the-author/ Author Instagram: @richardsparks_author Podcast Channel Links: Patreon: patreon.com/TFSFP Website: https://thefantasyandscififanaticspod.com/ Youtube Channel Subscription: https://youtube.com/@thefantasyandsci-fifanatic2328 Rss.com: https://media.rss.com/thefantasyandsci-fifanaticspodcast/feed.xml Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2aCCUhora9GdLAduLaaqiu?si=cl-8VWgaSrOGDwJg-cKONQ Discord Server: https://discord.gg/zd6mj2rQ Facebook Group join link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/402724958101648/?ref=share

The Blasters & Blades PodcastWe've got another interview with an amazing US Army veteran turned author. This time we're interviewing author TJ Reynolds (aka Rose) on to talk about her book Remnant Mage in The Twin Realms Apocalypse Series. This was a fun chat that ran a tad long, but we had fun learning about her fun LitRPG world. This fantasy progression sounds like it'll be extremely enjoyable! This was a fun interview, so go check out this episode. Lend us your eyes and ears, you won't be sorry!! Join us for a fun show! We're just a couple of nerdy Army veterans geeking out on things that go "abracadabra," "pew," "zoom," "boop-beep" and rhyme with Science Fiction & Fantasy. Co-Hosts: JR Handley (Author) (Grunt)Nick Garber (Comic Book Artist) (Super Grunt)Madam Stabby Stab (Uber Fan) (Horror Nerd)We work for free, so if you wanna throw a few pennies our way there is a linked Buy Me A Coffee site where you can do so. Just mention the podcast in the comments when you donate, and I'll keep the sacred bean water boiling!Support the Show: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/AuthorJRHandley Our LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/blastersandbladespodcast Today's SponsorGenesis: A LitRPG Fantasy Adventure by Jonathan Yanez & Ross Buzzell: https://www.amazon.com/Genesis-LitRPG-Journey-Legends-Online-ebook/dp/B07S9HTZ67/ Coffee Brand Coffee Affiliate Support the Show: https://coffeebrandcoffee.com/?ref=y4GWASiVorJZDb Discount Code: PodcastGrunts Coupon Code Gets you 10% offRemnant Mage, The Twin Realms Apocalypse Series by TJ Reynolds: https://www.amazon.com/Remnant-Mage-Apocalypse-Progression-Fantasy-ebook/dp/B0F4T37Y7S Follow TJ Reynolds on social mediaTJ's Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/TJ-Reynolds/author/B07XXJF5QL TJ's Website: https://tjreynoldsbooks.com/ TJ's Twitter: https://x.com/treynoldswrites TJ's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TJReynoldsAuthor/ TJ's Discord: https://discord.com/invite/ZdpKXCDg TJ's Patreon: https://bit.ly/4jCcaMj TJ's GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/20236720.T_J_Reynolds TJ's Royal Roads: https://www.royalroad.com/profile/144227Atlas Kane's Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Atlas-Kane/author/B087799H74 Recommended ReadingChimera King Omnibus by Atlas Kane: https://www.amazon.com/Chimera-King-Box-Set-Books-ebook/dp/B08W8LZWBB Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree: https://www.amazon.com/Legends-Lattes-Novel-Fantasy-Stakes-ebook/dp/B0B3755RV9 Geminis Crossing by Arlo Adams: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P7Y7L3D #scifishenanigans #scifishenaniganspodcast #bbp #blastersandblades #blastersandbladespodcast #podcast #scifipodcast #fantasypodcast #scifi #fantasy #books #rpg #comics #fandom #literature #comedy #veteran #army #armyranger #ranger #scififan #redshirts #scifiworld #sciencefiction #scifidaily #scificoncept #podcastersofinstagram #scificons #podcastlife #podcastsofinstagram #scifibooks #awardwinningscifi #newepisode #podcastersofinstagram #podcastaddict #podcast #scifigeek #scifibook #sfv #scifivisionaries #firesidechat #chat #panel #fireside #religionquestion #coffee #tea #coffeeortea #CoffeeBrandCoffee #JRHandley #NickGarber #MadamStabby #RoseReynolds #TJReynolds #starwars #jedi #georgelucas #lucasfilms #startrek #trekkie #firefly #serenity #browncoat #wheeloftime #wot #robertjordan #brandonsanderson #gameofthrones #got #grrm #georgerrmartin #ChroniclesofNarnia #CSLewis #RemnantMage #TheTwinRealmsApocalypse # brontosaurus #LandBeforeTime #Velociraptor #Trex #TyrannosaurusRex #JurassicPark #Amphibians #Reptiles #Mushrooms #Primeval #PrimevalNewWorld #Espresso #FlatWhiteEspresso #Cortado #quattro #Starbucks #AtlasKane #ChimeraKing #LegendsAndLattes #TravisBaldree #GeminisCrossing #ArloAdams #Necromancer #Spiritmancer #Mage #PortalFantasy #SummonerClass #Death Knight #SecondWorld

Welcome to the 95th Episode of the ABC Pod the Adult Book Club where we drink and we read things. This episodefeatures The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks. Discussion of the book starts at the 10th minute. Spoilers are between the 37 and 1:11 minute marks. We discuss our three points of view and the mystery surrounding each of them. In spoilers we talk about the Wastelands itself and the creatures and plants that inhabit it as well as what we thought about our passenger's decision at the end of the book. We finish with our usual segments and a LITRPG story for next time. Enjoy!

After an unforeseen hiatus due to technical issues, we're back with the one and only Sam Hinton. You may know him as samreay on reddit, or as the guy who made the amazing website where you can check out all the cover artists in the genre. Please check out Sam's books here:https://mybook.to/SoulRelicAnd his Website here:https://cosmiccoding.com.au/-------------------------------------------We have our own website now! It has all the info you need, a merch store, and more!https://critrpgpodcast.com/If you want to listen to the entire podcast without ads, PLUS at least ONE HOUR of additional content for EVERY EPISODE, consider subscribing to our Patreon!https://www.patreon.com/critrpgpodcastFind my own books and other links herehttps://linktr.ee/madix3I am active in these Discords and Groups! Check them out if you want to discuss LitRPG and progression Fantasy novels! https://linktr.ee/critrpglinksFor business inquiries: critrpgpodcast.social@gmail.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/critrpg-a-podcast-about-litrpg-progression-fantasy-and-their/donations

In this episode, we're talking about the writing and worldbuilding in the sci-fi/LitRPG novel Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. (Disclosure: we are a Bookshop.org affiliate, so if you purchase through these links, we will earn a small commission AND you will support an indie bookstore!)Proprietor's Pick: The Wandering Inn by pirateabaIntro and outro music: "The Tavern" by Michael GhelfiVisit the Tavern: ⁠Website⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Discord⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠Listen to our Worldbuilding Workshop bonus episodes by joining our ⁠Patreon⁠⁠Support Haneen's family in Gaza

In this week's episode, we take a look at marketing for writers, and discuss how it can both benefit and hinder writers. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Fury of the Barbarians, Book #5 in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store: BARBARIAN50 The coupon code is valid through May 2, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 247 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April 11th, 2025, and today we are looking at marketing challenges for writers.   First, let's start with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Fury of the Barbarians, Book Five in the Dragonskull series (as excellent narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That code is BARBARIAN50. We will have the coupon code in the show notes along with links to the store. This coupon code is valid through May 2, 2025, so if you need a new audiobook for spring, we've got you covered.   Now let's have an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. I am done with the rough draft of Shield of Battle and its accompanying short story, Raven's Hunt. I am currently editing them and making good progress on that. The book should come out either right before or right after Easter, with right after being the more likely option the way it looks right now. I'm also 14,000 words into Ghost in the Corruption, which will be my main project once Shield of Battle comes out. Audio recording is still underway for Shield of Deception and Ghost in the Assembly. So more updates on that to come. So that's where I'm at with my current writing projects.   00:01:17 Question of the Week   And now let's take a look at Question of the Week. Question of the Week is intended to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question, what is the best TV show you started watching in 2025 (if any)? No wrong answers, obviously.   Justin says: Television shows? The TV in my house is used for video games and movies. It has been 18 years since I watched any TV shows. Surabhi says: Nowadays the only non-Marvel series I watch are animes like Doraemon and Shinchan XD.   Perry says: I never watched a lot of TV but I do catch the odd European football or hockey game. That said, I'm enjoying The Wheel of Time.   Sam says: Clarkson's Farm. He might be a love him/hate him chap, but he certainly does make for entertaining shows. It also shows just how fickle the farming industry can be and shines a much needed light on the issues they face.   I would like to second Sam's recommendation of Clarkson's Farm. It's definitely well worth watching if you have access to Amazon Prime. Bonnie says:  I'm totally out of the loop. Haven't really watched any TV since I binged Avengers and Star War when home with Covid in 2021. I read during downtime.   Andrew says: Tracker is okay. Matlock is good, well-written. I want to like Watson, but have given up. Dark Winds is excellent. 1923 got so dark, I quit. Landman started great, got worse when wife character entered the picture. Re-watching Lonesome Dove. Love it.   David says: The Blacklist.   Michael says: No particular series as I don't really watch much on TV, but a shout out to the Japanese NHK World Channel, which is essentially their international service in English available to watch live on their website, at least in my country or via their app. There's so much good content on there, really interesting documentaries, news features, Japanese shows, and of course the highlights of the Sumo tournaments.   Larry says: Starting The Outpost.   John says: My brother has recommended Wolf Hall. My most anticipated series is Andor. I think of what I watched this year thus far my guilty pleasure was Reacher, most emotional was 1923, most cerebral has been Severance, and funniest has been The Residence. No favorite standout yet.   Juana says: Tracker.   William says: Poker Face was enjoyable.   For myself, I think it would be Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light about the downfall of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII. I'll have more to say about that later in my Winter/Spring 2025 Movie Roundup post in a few weeks.   00:03:29 Main Topic: Marketing   Now let's move on to our main topic, writing adjacent activities: marketing. This is part of my podcast series about what I call writing adjacent activities. What do I mean by this? I'm talking about the tasks that seem like they're part of the writing process but really belong in a different category. These tasks are important, don't get me wrong, but they can also be a pitfall if you spend too much time on them or don't use that time correctly. In this series, we are focusing on a few of these tasks and how they can benefit or hinder your writing process, even though they seem like good uses of time and may in fact be beneficial. In this episode, we will talk about marketing. For the self-published author, it is an absolutely essential thing to do. Even traditionally published authors are becoming involved in their marketing or hiring marketing firms apart from their publishers to help with that work. Even important tasks can still take time away from the most important one, writing.   First, how does marketing work for writers in the first place? Even as traditional advertising and print media like newspapers and periodicals has all disappeared by 2025, there are still many, many ways to advertise a book. Here are some examples:   Social media and I don't mean ads, I mean posting content about your book or engaging readers on social media about your book. It's become increasingly common in this age of a video-based social media like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels for authors to post short clips about them interacting with their book or doing things with their book and so forth. And that is, I think, a distinct category from ads.   Ads of course are another type of marketing such as Amazon Ads, Facebook, BookBub, etc.   An email newsletter where you send out an email to your newsletter subscribers when a book comes out   Having an author website   Group promotions where you work together with a group of authors to promote   Doing interviews with podcasts, local media, etc. (though these days podcasts have essentially superseded local media)   Sending out advanced reader copies   Permafree/discounts   I should note that of everything on this list, I've done them all except for advanced reader copies, which I never really bothered to do because I write so fast that it seems to be kind of pointless at that point. Now I got to admit that list seems overwhelming, but you're not going to do them all simultaneously. Most authors pick a few from the list and then focus on them, and then some of them take some work upfront like setting up your author website and then it's less work to maintain it and update it as you go along than it is to set it up to begin with.   For example, making many of my series starters permafree has been an extremely successful strategy for me. For an author who only has two books, that strategy would not be as effective, but if you have a series of nine books then that is a good idea.   So why is it beneficial to market your books? A couple years ago (and I've told this story before, but it bears repeating), I was at a Subway waiting in line to order lunch. The person in front of me was staring at the menu in great confusion. “Does this shop sell submarine sandwiches?”, she finally asked the sandwich artist. Even with 40,000 locations worldwide and millions of dollars in advertising each year, this person was completely unaware of Subway's offerings.   This moment made me realize that marketing must be constant even for big legacy brands like Subway or Coca-Cola because there is always someone out there who isn't familiar with what you have to offer them. If multi-billion dollar corporations like Coca-Cola and Subway have people who haven't heard of them, how much more [work is there for] indie authors like us? There is in my opinion, an erroneous sentiment that getting too involved in marketing as an author somehow cheapens your work, devalues your art, or means that you're not as committed to your art. That sentiment is frankly, in my opinion, self-destructive and keeping a lot of people from reaching new readers or keeping existing ones as new books come out.   Marketing is necessary and needs to be ongoing to work. It's important to remember that readers love new books and want to know more about them. Your goal is to just let them know what's available and how to find your work. You're not being annoying by creating an ad or sending out a newsletter when a new book drops. Even if you have loyal readers, it's likely only a very tiny percentage of them are obsessively checking ebook stores daily for your latest publications. Social media and newsletters in particular are effective ways to let people know when the latest content is ready or can help them get excited for an upcoming release. Just as importantly, good marketing can help you find people who are interested in your genre or read authors similar to you.   So marketing is a good thing and it is in fact necessary if you want to have a career as an indie author or sell books in any quantities. However, it can become a pitfall that takes time away from actually writing new books. So when can it be a pitfall? There are about five different ways it can become a hindrance to writing.   #1: The most obvious pitfall is that time spent working on marketing is time not spent on writing. Although marketing is an essential part of how writers make income, it's only going to go so far compared to creating new books. This is in fact a decision I've had to make many times where if there's only so many hours in the day, and if I have an hour and I have to choose an hour spent fiddling with ads to try and optimize them to sell old books or to focus on writing new books, very often I have decided to focus on writing new books. Or if I have ads that are underperforming, I just shut them off and don't think about them until I have a free moment when the current book is done because writing the latest book is where my attention and priority should be. #2: The second pitfall is that spending too much time on social media or various forums like Reddit can also skew your perspective and give you an unreal view of the preferences of your readership. You'll likely only engage with a small percentage of your readers online. Just because they're reaching out to you or sharing their opinions online doesn't mean that their opinion matches the rest of your readership. An example of this is when Warner Brothers thought there was a massive demand for the Snyder Cut of the Justice League movie based on an online fan campaign and spent a very large amount of money for the recut of the movie, only for it to have a fairly modest audience that didn't recoup the cost. Later it came out that much of the Twitter campaign for the recut were bot accounts, people with multiple social media accounts, or people that ultimately pirated the movie instead of getting an HBO subscription to watch it when it finally became available on streaming. The Internet is a very useful tool, but it's best to take it with a grain of salt and remember that that just because one person is saying something on the Internet doesn't mean there are ten or even a hundred silent people who share their views. As with the example with the Justice League movie, large businesses have run into that trouble where they assume just because a particular audience segment is very loud on social media, therefore it must be a large segment when in fact it turns out to be just a very loud minority that ultimately isn't going to have much buying power. So that is something to keep in mind when you examine [social media], that opinions expressed online may not necessarily reflect reality.   #3: There is also the temptation to get so lost in thinking of how a book will be marketed, that when you write it, you don't try to write a book that is authentic to you or your readers. Trying to piece together a book based on the latest tropes or sales trends will likely mean that by the time the book is ready, social media will have moved onto another one. Writing to market is a form of marketing that sometimes works, but often results in something that feels formulaic or doesn't match your writing style. You can't always tell if the author hated the book when they were writing it, but sometimes you can. And it's sometimes very obvious to tell if an author wrote a book not because he or she enjoyed writing it but because they thought it would sell. And I think deep down, you really have to enjoy the genre you're writing in, which is why many frustrated mystery, fantasy, and science fiction authors saw how well romance doing and so decided to try writing romance only to deep down they didn't enjoy reading romance and so they didn't write a romance book that anyone would enjoy reading. So that is the potential risk of that temptation.   #4: Another pitfall is the urge to market your way out of a book that isn't connecting with readers. If a book doesn't meet reader expectations, no amount of marketing is going to significantly change that. Sometimes it's best to cut your losses with a book or series if it's not performing the way that you expect instead of throwing even more money marketing at it. I'm afraid I have a very recent example for my own life in the form of these Stealth and Spells Online series.   I think the problem with that series is I fundamentally misread what the LitRPG audience wants. Stealth and Spells Online is about a virtual reality game, but what the LitRPG audience really seems to want these days is either Portal Isekai or System Apocalypse Fantasy, which Stealth and Spells Online most definitely isn't. I told the narrator that I intended to write a LitRPG, but what I ended up with was a science fiction espionage thriller with LitRPG elements. So that, as you might expect, has been very hard to market and very hard to turn a profit while marketing it. So what I decided to do was I originally planned for seven or eight books in the series, but I'm going to cut it down to three and wrap up the story in hopefully a satisfying way with book number three this summer. That is a lived experience example of a changing course when some marketing doesn't work.   #5: There can be a feeling that you're missing out if you're not trying a marketing strategy that worked for someone else, so you'll end up stretching yourself thin by trying everything, stretching your marketing time across social media, newsletters, video content, posting the spaces like Goodreads, assembling a launch team, sending out advanced reader copies, going on podcasts, doing interviews with local media, and doing guest blog posts simply is not sustainable. There is a potential value in doing a short-term marketing sprint like that where you do all the things for a few days, but doing that all the time is not a good idea. As we mentioned earlier, it can take away time that should be spent writing. So really the best marketing course is to pick a few tactics that you enjoy and are comfortable using and then do those most of the time and save everything else for special occasions or if an opportunity comes up. For myself, I mostly focus on setting first in series permafree and doing various ad campaigns on Facebook, Amazon, and BookBub. I tend to stay away from TikTok and video marketing and some of the more time intensive things. I prefer things like permafree or various CPC ads where I can set it up and let it run and then check on it every few days to make sure it's working or not spending too much. So how can you balance time spent on marketing with making progress with your writing? The best way to market your old books is to publish a new one. Algorithms on online stores like Amazon and all the others reward fresh books and readers have short memories, so taking years between series risks them forgetting you.   Finishing a series in a timely fashion is crucial now many readers, especially in Epic Fantasy (for a variety of reasons), will only start series that are already completed, having been burned by series that were left unfinished. Having a polished product should also precede your marketing efforts. If your cover looks bad, your money would be better spent on getting a professional looking cover instead of more Facebook ads. Taking the time to make a good cover and good ad copy for your ads is also important before you spend money on marketing. For marketing, it will save you time and money to map out your goals for it each year just like you map out a set of goals for what you'll publish each year. Having a clear set of goals will keep you from trying every new thing that you hear about just because it worked for someone else. It's also wise to be honest with yourself about your strengths when considering how you spend your marketing time. If you hate TikTok, forcing yourself to make videos there isn't going to lead to compelling content that would make people want to buy your book. The authors who have had success with TikTok had that because they were able to genuinely connect with an audience there, not just because they threw a book trailer on the platform and hoped for the best. As with many writing adjacent activities, it is best to have a set block of time to work on marketing and to plan even the time spent checking ads and responding to social media comments so it doesn't take over your writing time. Just like having a plan for each year with some larger goals is a good idea, having a daily or weekly set of goals for marketing can help keep you focused.   In conclusion, the true pitfall of any writing adjacent activity is they need to be kept adjacent to the actual production of new writing. All the tasks we covered in the series are important, but writing should always be the priority if you are a writer.   So that's it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this week's episode, we take a look at professional development for writers, and examine both the benefits and the pitfalls. We also take a look at my advertising results for March 2025. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Curse of the Orcs, Book #4 in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store: ORCCURSE50 The coupon code is valid through April 25, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 246 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April 4, 2025, and today we are looking at professional development for writers. Before we get to our main topic, we'll have Coupon of the Week, an update on my current writing and audiobook projects, Question of the Week, and then a look back at how my various ads performed for March 2025.   So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Curse of the Orcs, Book Four in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is ORCCURSE50. As always, you can find the coupon code and the links to my store in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through April 25th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered.   Now for an update on my current writing projects. I'm very pleased to report that the rough draft of Shield of Battle is done, 102,800 words written in 22 days. That will be the second to last book in the Shield War series. If all goes well, I'm still hoping to have that out and edited and published before the end of the month. I'm now working on a currently untitled short story that newsletter subscribers will get for free in ebook form when Shield of Battle comes out. So this might be a great time to sign up for my new release newsletter. I am also 10,000 words into Ghost in the Corruption and that will be my main project after Shield of Battle is out.   Recording is still underway for Shield of Deception and Ghost in the Assembly. That is Brad Wills and Hollis McCarthy narrating, respectively. So I am looking forward to having those audiobooks out for you to listen to and then Shield the Battle and Ghost in the Corruption available for you to read, but I just have to get back to work on them.   00:01:48 Question of the Week   Now it's time for Question of the Week. Question of the Week is intended to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question, what games (if any) are you currently playing? No wrong answers, including “I don't play video games”. The inspiration for this question was that the fact that Nintendo was having this big Switch 2 announcement on April 2, which is amusing to me personally on a meta level because people have been speculating wildly about a Switch successor for years. Baseless Switch 2 rumors have been a clickfarm industry for years. Probably Nintendo had to have it on April 2 so no one would think it was a really elaborate April Fool's Day joke. Justin says: Online it would be World of Warcraft Classic. Otherwise, it is Conquest of the New World. Like me, my games are old and dated.   I can relate to Justin because I'm currently playing a game that was first made in 1994, but more on that later.   Sam says: Currently dancing between two games, my long-term love game, Final Fantasy 14 and Dragon Age: the Veilguard. The Veilguard was a massive disappointment for me, unfortunately, but it still has its reasonably okay points, but man, the developers dropped the ball in the worst way since Cyberpunk's disastrous release.   That's interesting because I've actually encountered a couple different people who have played Dragon Age: Veilguard and they either love it or hate it. There is just no in-between. So that does seem to be the kind of game where you either love the thing or you just hate it. Todd says: Enjoying No Man's Sky, waiting for Light No Fire. Continuing to grind World of Warcraft retail. Recently played the re-release of Half Life. Today, I also installed Lands of Lore, gotta love Patrick Stewart as King Richard!   I had forgotten that Patrick Stewart voiced King Richard back in the ‘90s in the Lands of Lore game. His most famous video game part (I think) is playing Emperor Uriel Septim in the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.   JKM says: Monster Hunter Wilds and Star Citizen.   Jesse says: Been doing an on and off run on Enshrouded. The story hasn't hugely gripped me as yet, but the mechanics are fun if you like Breath of the Wilds-esque world exploration.   Michael says: I'm currently playing Star Traders: Frontiers, which is a 2D indie space trading/exploration/crew management game in a vaguely Dune-like setting. It has turn based squad combat in Darkest Dungeon style too. Originally a mobile game but mechanics are surprisingly deep. It's good fun.   Randy says: Wizardry Remaster. Ironic because I didn't play the original.   For myself, I am kind of alternating between three current games. I am playing the Master of Magic remake on the PC and I'm determined to finally beat a campaign at that. I am still playing Iratus: Lord of the Dead and drawing closer to the final level. And when I'm really tired and don't want to do anything else that requires a lot of brain power, I still fire up some Starfield and go really mess up the day of some procedurally generated space pirates.   So watch my website and Facebook for Question of the Week if you want to have your comment read on the show as well.   00:04:39 Ad Results for March 2025   Now let's look at how my ads for my books did in March 2025, which is interesting because I changed things up a fair bit for ads in March. The reason I did this is because the economy isn't great and not likely to improve for several years. I saw someone arguing that all the policy decisions in the Covid era will have a 15 year economic hangover into which we're only five years, and I think that argument might have some merit to it. So because of that, I thought it might be prudent to move some older series into Kindle Unlimited. So I did that with the Demonsouled books and with Cloak Games, though not with Cloak Mage, which will remain wide as new books come out. I might do it with Silent Order as well, but I haven't decided. My thinking is that as people are looking to economize, subscription services will probably offer better value than direct book sales.   So let's see how we did. For Facebook ads, I did Cloak Games/Cloak Mage and The Ghosts. For Games/Cloak Mage, I got $4.14 back for every $1 spent, with 10% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. For The Ghosts, I got back $8.73 for every dollar spent, with 6% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. Obviously the total for The Ghosts might be inflated because of Ghosts in the Assembly, which did well. Thanks, everyone! Without Ghosts in the Assembly, The Ghosts still would've done $3.68 for every dollar spent, with 15% for the profit coming from the audiobooks. So still pretty good.   For Amazon ads, I mostly focused on Half-Elven Thief. Remember that for an Amazon ad to be successful, it needs to get a sale or a complete Kindle Unlimited read for every six to eight clicks. So for Half-Elven Thief, I got back $3.41 for every $1 spent, with a sale or a complete KU read for every 0.84 clicks, which is a really good result. However, it was not all roses in Amazon ads because I gave up on advertising Stealth and Spells Online: Creation. I've realized I fundamentally misunderstood what readers in the LitRPG actually want. I'm still going to finish the series this summer with the final book. I am 75,000 words into it as of this recording, but I don't think I'm going to advertise the series anymore.   For Demonsouled, I did a combined Facebook/Amazon ads campaign and for a combined campaign like that, it's easiest just to track the return. So for Demonsouled, I got back $2.53 for every dollar spent on Facebook and Amazon ads. So that was pretty close to how it did in February.   I also did some BookBub ad campaigns for The Ghosts and Sevenfold Sword on Apple. For The Ghosts, we got back $9.24 for every dollar I spent and for Sevenfold Sword, I got back $6.76 back for every dollar spent. So those are some very good results.   Finally, I've begun experimenting with BookBub ads for Google Play. I tried out Sevenfold Sword first and for Sevenfold Sword on Google Play with BookBub ads, we got back $3.86 for every dollar. So that is a promising beginning and I might try more experiments with BookBub ads and Google Play in May. So a good month all in all. Thanks for reading, everyone. Hopefully I'll have more new books for you soon.   00:07:46 Main Topic: Professional Development   So our main topic this week will be part three of our series on writing adjacent activities, and that is professional development. As I mentioned on past episodes, I'm working on a new podcast series on what I call writing adjacent activities. What do I mean by this? I'm talking about the tasks that seem like they're a part of the writing process but really belong in a different category. These tasks are important, but they can also be a pitfall if you spend too much time on them or don't use that time correctly. In this series, we'll focus on a few of these tasks and how they can benefit or hinder your writing process, even though they seem like good uses of time and may in fact be beneficial in proper amounts.   In this episode, we'll talk about professional development for writers. Those working in education, healthcare, or the corporate world will be very familiar with this concept. For those who aren't familiar with professional development, let's explain what it is. What is professional development and what is it for writers specifically? Professional development generally means gaining skills or knowledge that can help someone stay current in their field and grow in their work. In some fields like teaching or healthcare, professional development is required and must be done regularly. Some examples of typical professional development tasks include learning a new programming language, attending conferences, and reading professional journals. Writers have many of these same opportunities. Ther are a slew of conferences, workshops, webinars, videos, courses, and books available for writers to hone their craft, pick up marketing skills, and learn the ever evolving technical skills needed to self-publish and have an online presence. Some of these options, especially conferences and retreats, can be very expensive and time consuming while others are free and quick to consume, such as blog posts or podcast episodes.   How can you benefit from professional development? There are five ways.   #1: You can learn information and techniques that can help you improve your writing. An example would be a workshop session presenting data on when readers typically give up when starting a new book, which can help you think about how your book is structured.   #2: You can learn about technology and software that can make your work more efficient or look more professional. An example of this would be tutorials on how to use formatting software to turn Word documents into a formatted ebook.   #3: In-person professional development can help you network with others in your field. For example, if one of your priorities is being added to group promotion, meeting other authors at a workshop or a conference could lead to more promising leads than just emailing people.   #4: You can keep up with the constant changes in the field and adjust your strategies and plans accordingly. For example, Amazon's policies for KDP change constantly, sometimes monthly, it feels like. Writing blogs and podcasts can often explain these changes in a practical way that's more efficient than trying to parse long legal documents yourself.   #5: Finally, and fifthly, some people find professional development motivational or it helps them to feel more excited about their work. An example is a phenomenon called the post conference high, when someone returns from a conference with a high level of excitement and a list of plans a mile long. It's easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day tasks of work and sometimes professional development can shake things up in a positive way.   So professional development can be a good thing, but there are ways it can hinder your writing process. So we'll look at four ways that professional development can get in the way of you actually sitting down and getting some writing done.   #1: One of the downsides of being a writer is that professional development must be self-funded or you must pursue your own scholarships or grants for it, which are pretty limited compared to professional development in other fields. It is quite easy to spend tens of thousands of dollars on it each year, so each opportunity must be carefully considered. It's important not to spend money without a clear plan for how to turn it into action and without researching less expensive (but still effective) options that might serve your purposes. It's also important to look carefully to see if you can find lower cost options before registering for something. For example, instead of going to a weeklong residential bootcamp to learn WordPress, you could find a community education class or a LinkedIn Learning class (which many libraries provide to their patrons). Do you need a full course offered by another author or are you only interested in one portion of it and can learn that information from a YouTube channel? There is a lot of nonsense on the Internet of course, but one of the advantages of living in the modern era is that there is an abundance of good free information. You just have to find it.   My podcast transcriptionist has something that she likes to call the Two Buck Chuck Principle. It is named after the store brand of wine from Trader Joe's. That's way back when it was $2 a bottle, hence the popular nickname for it. Many people refuse to stray from this cheapest available option at the store because they find it meets their alcohol related needs and refuse to buy more expensive bottles.   The point of this principle is that like those Trader Joe's shoppers, my podcast transcriptionist will search for the free and low cost option for something first and then see what is missing from them that a more expensive option offers before buying the more expensive option. For example, if you're just starting out as a writer, you may be tempted to pay $3,000 or $4,000 for consulting sessions about advertising strategies because you read a convincing testimonial. Realistically, if you only have one or two books with only a handful of reviews and you're not willing to throw thousands of additional dollars on a professional style ad campaign, this would be severe overkill.   Applying the Two Buck Chuck Principle to this person's ad spending, it would make more sense to learn the basics first through webinars and blog posts on the topic. Something like Brian Cohen's Five Day Amazon Ad Challenge would teach the basics of using the interface and some strategies that keep a rookie from overspending or straying from their target audience. Once a writer has a few years of sales and several books in the same series, then perhaps it might be wise to progress to something more advanced and expensive, like hiring a consultant.   For most professional development, if you're paying money, you're either paying for being in a physical location or you're paying for the time someone else took to assemble and present the knowledge for you (in the case of a conference or workshop, both). For the latter, you can usually apply this Two Buck Chuck Principle by taking the time to assemble the knowledge yourself or find others who have through blogs, podcasts, and lower cost books. Someone like Joanna Penn or David Gaughran provides a wealth of sensible advice through these types of much lower cost options.   #2: Professional development, like many other writing adjacent activities, can give you the illusion of progress. Knowing about something and actually doing it are very different things. You have to have a specific plan for how you will implement your professional development. The sooner you start after completing your professional development activity, the more likely you are to benefit from it. Even five minutes a day working on it helps keep the knowledge fresh and gives you the confidence to continue.   #3: The number of available options for professional development can be paralyzing and it can be easy to feel like you have to do it all. The fear of missing out is a very real phenomenon, but it's necessary to combat it by being intentional with your time. Start by making your goals for the next year and then seeing what professional development you need to further those goals. For example, if creating video content is not part of your goals for the year, then it doesn't make sense to watch webinars on creating Instagram Reels or TikTok videos, even if you feel like it might be useful or you have a fear of missing out on the information. Your professional development, your goals, and your output all need to be in harmony in order to progress as a writer.   I have talked before about how a certain degree of tunnel vision is necessary to write at the pace that I do. Because I want to publish frequently, I often ignore conference and workshop opportunities because travel actively hinders my main goal of getting down as many words as possible each day.   #4: Professional development can take up so much time that it keeps you from the priority of writers, which is actually writing. Like the other writing adjacent activities out there, they expand to the size you'll allow. Planning your professional development goals for the year when you've created your writing goals can help you be disciplined in choosing the activities that will serve you best and fit with the time you can give them.   For example, if your goal is to set up an author website in May, you can allocate a little block of time each day for that month to watching tutorials, reading instructions, checking out other author sites for inspiration, and testing out the software. You wouldn't want to attend a three week intensive writing retreat in May because that would likely derail your progress on your other goal.   So finally, what do I personally do for professional development? What has helped me? I think the biggest help I had in terms of writing advice was a book called Billion Dollar Outlines by David Farland. It's well worth reading and a good look at story structure and understanding story structure that I think would be very helpful if you're struggling to finish an outline and write a book. Most of my professional development since then has been aimed towards the goal of trying to sell as many books as possible. So I took the Self-Publishing Formula course on advertising for Facebook, which was very helpful. I read a couple of different books on Facebook advertising, which was helpful. What was really helpful was a course on Photoshop I took in 2020 and 2021 that really increased my Photoshop skills and gave me the ability to do my own covers, which is very helpful because you often have to book a cover designer out well in advance. So that was very useful. And beyond that, I keep an eye on the various writing podcasts and Facebook groups. I don't really participate in the Facebook groups because that can be a huge time sink. Arguing with random people over the internet is not a productive use of time, but it is a good way to keep an eye on news within the indie author space and what people are doing and what trends you can expect to see. So that's what I do.   In short, professional development, like so many other writing adjacent activities, is a good thing that can hinder your progress if it's not done with intentionality and clear goals. As I said earlier in the podcast, your professional development, your goals, and your output all need to be harmonized in order to progress as a writer.   So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to the Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. And a quick note of thanks to my podcast transcriptionist for helping me to pull together the research for this episode. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

Mockingjay finale We finally did it! We've finished the original Hunger Games trilogy, and boy do we have a lot to say about how little this series had to say. You would think there would be some big ideas in a story that ends with a horrific false flag atrocity, a member of the core love triangle making cluster munitions, and multiple megalomaniacs being betrayed, but... nope! Mostly it's about how sometimes you've just gotta do you. Or something. We turn to the tantalizingly-titled 'Writing About War' interview that's intrigued us for the whole show for insights instead. We also chat about LitRPG fiction, "cozy" mysteries, pulp, and a little bit more about our upcoming project!

Following our last episode, we sit down with Travis Deverell, a.k.a. Shirtaloon, author of the popular LitRPG novel He Who Fights With Monsters. Learn more about Travis Deverell and his book series at hewhofightswithmonsters.com. Please consider supporting us below: Dan Eavenson: Check out The World of Juno, and read his book Dave Woke Up! Peter Schaefer: Check out Peter's games here, and see his newest TTRPG, The Well! Caty: Visit Griffin's Roost Books and Treasure to purchase new and used books and more! For More TMT Shenanigans: toomanythoughtsmedia.com Twitter: @TMT_Media, @ArgentRabe, @ShoelessPete, @ShimmyBook, @SinisterInfant E-mail: toomanythoughtsmedia@gmail.com

Mike, author of Lord of Goblins and Legendary Retirement is joining me today, to talk about writing for comics, pubbing books, and our upcoming trip to Japan!

For this episode of Season 4, I had the express pleasure of interviewing Canadian based author Tao Wong who is best known for his System Apocalypse post-apocalyptic LitRPG series and A Thousand Li, a Chinese xianxia fantasy series. We had a great chat about what inspires him to write, the types of stories and characters he likes to write about, and what it is like writing in different genres and subgenres.I have personally read The First Step, book 1 in his A Thousand Li series. This was a terrific read and I am excited to read book 2 very soon. His first book in the series and his co-authored book Head of the Class with Jason J. Willis are on my 2025 Reading List so please make sure to check out both videos on my Youtube Channel.Make sure to check out his book and social links below! Please make sure to subscribe to our Youtube Channel to see the latest news and updates of great authors and creators like Tao!Starlit Publishing Website: https://starlitpublishing.com/Author Amazon Profile Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B073PSD9WY/aboutAuthor Website: https://www.mylifemytao.com/Author Instagram: @taowongauthorAuthor Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/taowongauthor/Podcast Channel Links:Patreon: patreon.com/TFSFPWebsite: https://thefantasyandscififanaticspod.com/Youtube Channel Subscription: https://youtube.com/@thefantasyandsci-fifanatic2328Rss.com: https://media.rss.com/thefantasyandsci-fifanaticspodcast/feed.xmlSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2aCCUhora9GdLAduLaaqiu?si=cl-8VWgaSrOGDwJg-cKONQDiscord Server: https://discord.gg/zd6mj2rQFacebook Group join link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/402724958101648/?ref=share

This month, we discuss the popular LitRPG novel He Who Fights With Monsters, and hold a discussion on the LitRPG genre more broadly. Please consider supporting us below: Dan Eavenson: Check out The World of Juno, and read his book Dave Woke Up! Peter Schaefer: Check out Peter's games here, and see his newest TTRPG, The Well! Caty: Visit Griffin's Roost Books and Treasure to purchase new and used books and more! For More TMT Shenanigans: toomanythoughtsmedia.com Twitter: @TMT_Media, @ArgentRabe, @ShoelessPete, @ShimmyBook, @SinisterInfant E-mail: toomanythoughtsmedia@gmail.com

This week on the CritRPG Podcast I'm joined by Hannibal Forge, who talks about autism, lights in the dark, writing romantic subplots, and promising peaks early. Please check out Hannibal's Books here:https://www.royalroad.com/profile/215525-------------------------------------------We have our own website now! It has all the info you need, a merch store, and more!https://critrpgpodcast.com/If you want to listen to the entire podcast without ads, PLUS at least ONE HOUR of additional content for EVERY EPISODE, consider subscribing to our Patreon!https://www.patreon.com/critrpgpodcastFind my own books and other links herehttps://linktr.ee/madix3I am active in these Discords and Groups! Check them out if you want to discuss LitRPG and progression Fantasy novels! https://linktr.ee/critrpglinksFor business inquiries: critrpgpodcast.social@gmail.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/critrpg-a-podcast-about-litrpg-progression-fantasy-and-their/donations

Alex Knight joins us this week on the CritRPG Podcast, and we discuss writer's block, being sociable, and putting on Alex's TikTok writing stream! Please check out Alex' books here:https://authoralexknight.com/-------------------------------------------We have our own website now! It has all the info you need, a merch store, and more!https://critrpgpodcast.com/If you want to listen to the entire podcast without ads, PLUS at least ONE HOUR of additional content for EVERY EPISODE, consider subscribing to our Patreon!https://www.patreon.com/critrpgpodcastFind my own books and other links herehttps://linktr.ee/madix3I am active in these Discords and Groups! Check them out if you want to discuss LitRPG and progression Fantasy novels! https://linktr.ee/critrpglinksFor business inquiries: critrpgpodcast.social@gmail.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/critrpg-a-podcast-about-litrpg-progression-fantasy-and-their/donations

In this week's episode, we take a look at five lessons for writers from Barnes & Nobles' turnaround. I also discuss indie author advertising results from February 2025. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Blade of the Elves, Book #3 in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store: BLADE50 The coupon code is valid through March 28, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 242 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March 7, 2025, and today we are looking at writing lessons from the dramatic turnaround of Barnes and Noble. We'll also look at my ad results for February 2025 and we'll also have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing projects and Question of the Week.   First off, let's start with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Blade of the Elves, Book Number Three in the Dragon Skull Series (as excellent narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store. That coupon code is BLADE50. We'll have the coupon code and the link in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through March 28th, 2025, so if you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered. Now an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. The rough draft of Ghosts in the Assembly is done and I am 16% into the second phase of editing. If all goes well, I am planning to publish the book on March 14th, assuming there are no unanticipated interruptions, which is always risky to rely upon, but things are going well with it and I'm optimistic we can do that. I'm also 13,000 words into Shield of Battle and after Ghost in the Assembly is published, that will be my main project.   In audiobook news, Orc-Hoard, the fourth book in the Half-Elven Thief series (as narrated by Leanne Woodward), is now available and you can get it at all the usual audiobook stores. Half-Elven Thief: Omnibus One (which is a combination of Half-Elven Thief, Wizard-Thief, and Half-Orc Paladin, the first three books in the series) is also now available in audio (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward), and you can give that omnibus edition at Audible, Amazon, and Apple. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects.   00:01:49 Question of the Week   Question the Week is designed to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question, when you have an unpleasant chore that must be done, do you prefer to split it up into smaller parts over a number of days or just to get it all over with at once? No wrong answers, obviously. The inspiration for this question is the fact that it's tax prep time here in the United States, and I have spent a lot of time this week working on that.   Justin says: I prefer to get it over with all at once if possible. Extending your example, I have somehow become the tax preparer for other family members, so there are a few days where that is what I do. I also set aside a few hours every month for vehicle maintenance: check fluids, tire pressure, top off everything, look at belts (replace if worn). It's amazing how more reliable cars are when you look after them a bit.   That is very true. Good car maintenance advice from Justin.   Catriona says: Procrastinate. I love to procrastinate, then the mad dash to the very last second of the deadline. Retired now, so no longer need to be efficiently organized.   Jenny says: Oh, split if I can, procrastinate if I can't. Dishes? Do some or put some away, do more later or let my laundry pile up until I have no pants.   And Juana says: Let's get this over with. (Transcriptionist's note: this was posted in the form of a GIF of Liz Lemon from 30 Rock)   For myself, I suppose the answer is that I essentially get to do both since I'm technically a small business owner as a publisher, I do some tax stuff every month and then usually have a couple of days in March that are all tax prep. Other than that, it really depends on the size of the task in question. My preferred way would be to split a task up into smaller pieces and do 'em until they're done. But if you have something like snow shoveling, for example, you really do have to kind of bite the bullet and get it over with all at once.   00:03:21 February 2025 Ad Results   Now let's see how my ads did in February 2025. February is generally a better month for advertising than November, December, and January. The reason for that is that Valentine's Day and the Super Bowl drives some consumer spending, though not nearly as much as the Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays, and so therefore the cost per click is often lower and you can usually have good results with ads.   First up, Facebook ads. In February, I advertised both Cloak Games/Cloak Mage and all the Ghosts on Facebook. For Cloak Games/Cloak Mage, I got back $2.98 (USD) for every dollar spent, with 6.8% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. For the Ghosts, I got back $3.24 cents for every dollar spent, with 15.4% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. I also ran a few different Amazon ad campaigns. Remember that for an Amazon ad campaign to work, it needs to generate a sale or a complete Kindle Unlimited page readthrough for every six to eight clicks. For Half-Elven Thief, I got back $2.30 for every dollar spent, with a sale for every 0.68 clicks. In other words, we had more total sales than we had clicks. For Stealth and Spells Online: Creation, I lost $2.52 for every dollar spent, with a sale for every 8.1 clicks. For The Linux Command Line Beginner's Guide, I got back $1.86 for every dollar spent, with a sale for every one click and 32% of the month's profit coming from the audiobook. I think this shows how badly I misjudged the LitRPG market with Stealth and Spells Online. The ads for Half-Elven Thief actually get more search terms for LitRPG related searches than Stealth and Spells actually does. I ran BookBub ads for Sevenfold Sword and The Ghosts on Apple, and here's how they did. For The Ghosts, I got back $5.26 for every dollar spent. For Sevenfold Sword, I got back $4.35 for every $1 spent. Finally, for the Demonsouled series, which is currently in KU, I did a combined Facebook and Amazon campaign, and when you run multi-platform ad campaigns like that, the most valuable metric tends to be honestly money back for dollar spent. So for Demonsouled, I got back $2.58 for every dollar spent. So good results, all in all, and I didn't actually lose that much money on Stealth and Spells. So thanks for reading everyone and hopefully I'll have more good books for you to read soon.   00:05:47 Main Topic: Lessons for Writers from Barnes and Noble's Turnaround   So now onto our main topic this week, lessons for Writers from Barnes and Noble's Turnaround because it is fair to say Barnes and Noble has had a turnaround recently. For a while at the end of the 2010s and the early 2020s, people would have their self-publishing predictions for the year, and one of them was almost always that Barnes and Noble is going to finally close, which was a reversal of fortune for it because if you remember in the ‘90s and the 2000s and even the early part of the 2010s, Barnes and Noble was the juggernaut in the publishing industry. They had forced out of business a lot of smaller indie bookstores and what Barnes and Noble wanted in the publishing industry, Barnes and Noble got. Then just as Barnes and Noble disrupted all the smaller book chains and independent bookstores, Amazon came along and disrupted Barnes and Noble. And so for a while it looked like Barnes and Noble was going to go out of business, but Barnes and Noble's revenue actually grew 1.6% in fiscal year 2024, and their foot traffic is up significantly. They're planning 60 new stores after a wave of closures in previous years.   A few years ago, as I said, they seemed headed for extinction, yet a combination of unpredictable factors and good decisions helped turned around Barnes and Noble. What are some of those factors leading into it? I suspect one of them is that many people are forced to be on screens all day and can find this frustrating or stressful, especially when schooling and work were virtual. I've talked to some teachers over the past couple of years and they would tell me stories of, for example, younger children who will burst into tears at the site of a Chromebook just because the experience of remote learning via Chromebooks was so stressful and miserable in 2020 and 2021 (and places that held onto that policy for probably longer than they should have). So much socialization nowadays is conducted online too through TikToks and chats and text messages and so forth. Because of this, many now feel like print books are a break from being constantly online. Various social media people such as TikTokers and Instagrammers make Barnes and Noble trips and hauls, showing off giant stacks of the latest books, filling up feeds. Home book displays are also a trend online, as collectors show off carefully style collections of books. Owning physical books and browsing the shelves at Barnes and Noble has become cool again. Truly history is a wheel that keeps on turning.   So what lessons can you take from this turnaround as a writer (even if your physical books aren't stocked by Barnes and Noble and you don't sell that many eBooks through them)? How they approach their relationship with their readers and their customers still has a few lessons to provide writers.   #1: Focus on your primary mission and also double down on what actually works. Barnes and Noble started to devote much of their store space to a confusing, aimless mixture of toys and gifts mixed in with the books. The stores began to look cluttered and much of this merchandise did not actually sell to their customers. They also wasted a large sum of money trying to compete with Amazon, Apple, and tech companies with their Nook tablets and kept Nook ereaders as a strong store presence long after it was clear they had lost the battle for the ebook market. There was even an extremely ill-advised foray into Barnes and Noble restaurants. Customers were quick to reject $13 avocado toast and $7 oatmeal from a mall chain bookstore.   One, when the company focused on returning to selling print books and making the store a better place to browse, sales improved. Many stores moved the gifts and games away from the book areas and back into the dedicated sections, which cleaned up the layout and made it easier for customers wanting non-book items to find what they were looking for. Since most of the customers were actually there to buy books, that made it easier to buy books.   How to apply this as a writer? Your job as a writer is to create and sell books. Getting lost in side quests, like overly frequent social media posting, creating courses or webinars, and selling merchandises are only taking time away from what your readers actually want the most from you: more books. So double down on writing more books, just as Barnes Noble doubled down on selling more books.   #2: Target the right people. Barnes Noble's display spaces and tables were taken up by books that publishers paid to place there. This led to their prime store space being taken up by books that were often poor sellers or not a good fit for their local customers. It was better to turn down the short-term money but have more targeted displays, including putting similar books in “thematic nooks.”   By focusing much of their marketing on the BookTok/Bookstagram groups of heavy readers, they were able to find ways to appeal to a younger and growing customer base. Since this group loves books both as content and décor, showcasing exclusive or “aesthetic” special editions was a way to bring these customers back into the store and keep them from buying cheaper copies online. These readers were also willing to spend a few dollars extra for the experience and to ensure that the books they were buying weren't damaged, which is often a complaint when you buy books online, that they sometimes aren't packaged properly and arrive damaged in transit. Store space was also devoted to manga readers, another group that reads voraciously and enjoys the experience of reading the print version and later collecting the print version as opposed to the electronic one.   Now, how do you apply this as a writer? Appeal to your core audience. Instead of trying to appeal to everyone, find your core “thematic nook” (as Barnes Noble puts it), meaning similar authors and titles. There are resources like Publisher Rocket that can help you do this. Focus your advertising on finding these readers instead of the general population.   For myself, I've experienced this lesson personally in the last four years because in the last four years I've tried three different new things: The Cormac Rogan Mysteries, the Stealth and Spells LitRPG book, and the Rivah Half-Elven series. And of the three, Rivah was by far the most successful because it was another form of epic fantasy, which I think is what my core audience really wants from me and not contemporary mysteries or LitRPG. So this is the lesson I can attest to through personal experience.   #3: Give customers a good experience. Barnes and Noble spent money on repainting, installing brighter lighting, and changing store layouts. The CEO James Daunt stated it was their aim to make the store feels like “places of discovery.” Chairs were even added back to some stores to allow readers to browse in comfort.   Now, how can you apply this to being a writer? First, you want to make sure that your readers have the easiest possible experience, the most pleasant possible experience in buying books from you. One way to do this is keep your website updated and check for broken links, which is easier said than done. I know, especially for me since Ghost in the Assembly will be my 160th novel, and that is a lot of links to check and my website had gotten complex enough that I finally hired someone to overhaul it and make sure all the links were working. But I think we've had good results since traffic is up and I get much fewer complaints now about dead links. It's often a good idea to refresh ad images to keep potential readers' attention. For Facebook ads, I think based on my experience, the best you can hope for is two to three weeks of good results with a single image. For BookBub, maybe three or four days. So it's good to have a supply of ad images you can rotate out often. Finally, incentivize readers to read your newsletter by keeping it brief and providing some kind of special reward, like a discount or bonus content, which is why I give away a lot of short stories in my email newsletter.   #4: Be willing to change it up or try new things. Barnes and Noble's leadership also ceded more control of the selection and displays to the individual stores, allowing them to better customize the stores towards the taste of the community. For most of Barnes and Noble's history, if you walked into the store and you saw the displays in the front and on the end caps where books were highlighted. Publishers paid through the nose for the privilege of having their books stocked that way. And while there is still some of that, obviously the new regime at Barnes and Noble has changed things around so that more local stores have greater control of what to put where, which means they can put out more books that their local community is more likely to buy. If you walk into a Barnes and Noble in Illinois, for example, you're much more likely to see a large display of Illinois local history than you would have otherwise.   For another example, I once visited a Barnes and Noble in a large suburb that had a very large teenage population that had the Young Adult section wedged in a single cramped back corner by the bathrooms. It was extremely unpleasant to browse, especially if one person was already in the aisle. And of course, if there was a line for the bathroom, which is often the case, teenagers typically want more physical space from strangers. This decision to put the Young Adult section in a cramped corner in the back of the store was clearly made by someone who did not a lot of experience talking to or working with teenagers. After Daunt's changes, Young Adult was moved to the center of the store. The aisles in the new section were extra wide to accommodate groups of teens browsing together, and it was now full of colorful displays, many of which were handmade by staff members. In the times I visited this Barnes and Noble since, it is always the busiest part of the store.   Another surprise area of growth was the refreshing of the stationery and planner section. The previous selection was stale and heavily reliant on older licensed properties like Disney. It wasn't reflective of the trends in the category being popularized (once again by Instagram and TikTok), such as dot grid notebooks with high quality paper and guided journals (like the influencer favorite, the Five Minute Journal, which offers a few brief prompts to reflect on the day). Barnes and Noble bought the stationery brand Paper Source, which brought in fresh designs to its cards and stationery. They also changed their selection to adapt to two of the biggest trends in stationery, bullet journaling and customizable Japanese planners. Stationery enthusiasts were willing to pay a premium to be able to see stationery items in person before buying, since that allows you to avoid counterfeit versions that are sold online and ensure that the product was in pristine condition and would not arrive through the mail damaged. Since the margins on stationery are way higher than they are in books, this was a wise decision.   Now how can we apply this lesson as a writer? One of the advantages of being self-published is the ability to change quickly based on data and reader feedback. For example, the Stealth and Spells Online series was originally called the Sevenfold Sword Online. Once I realized that readers were confusing this series with the main Sevenfold Sword series, I changed the title to help prevent confusion and emphasized that the series was in fact a separate one. I also changed the cover to reflect trends in the LitRPG series, such as characters' faces usually not being shown and a more diffused, animation-influenced color palette.   If one of your books isn't connecting with readers, it may be worth your time to update your blurb and cover trends based on your categories. Another similar experience I had was with the Silent Order covers where I went through five different iterations with that cover before I settled on the version I have now, which definitely sells the best.     #5: Do what Amazon can't. The new CEO of Barnes and Noble focused on what Amazon couldn't do: provide a physical environment for browsing.  Browsing aisles of books with a cup of coffee (from the Barnes and Noble Café) in hand is a relaxing experience for many people. Amazon famously tried to set up its own chain of physical bookstores, and it didn't work out because the experience for customers tended to be industrial and unpleasant in a way that made an airport newsstand seem downright cozy in comparison. The bookstores were stocked with just a very limited selection of popular books on plain shelves with electronic price tags. Nothing about it inspired browsing or finding new books, the most important way physical bookstores inspire readers to buy additional books.   This was an example of Amazon doing the opposite of our first lesson. Rather than doubling down on what was working, they tried something that was away from their core competency of low prices and fast delivery, which was a physical bookstore. In fact, one of these Amazon bookstores opened across the street from author Ann Patchett's Parnassus books, which is an indie bookstore in Nashville that provides lots of help from friendly, knowledgeable staff, autographed books from authors like Patchett, and a full calendar of events with local authors. Reviewers who have visited this indie bookstore rave about the friendly and helpful staff and the cozy atmosphere. Even though Parnassus offered higher prices than the Amazon bookstore across the street, the experience was so much better that it's not surprising that the Amazon bookstore did not work and that Parnassus outlasted this physical Amazon bookstore that opened across the street. As many people have found out the hard way, it is very difficult to compete with Amazon on price. Instead of constantly discounting books with buy two get one free promotions or providing steep discounts through its membership program, Barnes and Noble stopped trying to compete with Amazon on price and turned their attention to something that Amazon couldn't do, which is the physical experience of the store. Events like children's story times and special events (complete with gift bags) for popular releases like Onyx Storm brought in people who hadn't been to a physical store in a while.   Now, the point of this isn't to indulge in Amazon bashing because Amazon does get criticized a lot, sometimes fairly, sometimes not fairly. The point is that trying to compete with Amazon on its core competencies of low price and fast delivery is not a good idea. And so instead, you need to try and find a way to do something well that Amazon can't do or Amazon isn't interested in doing. Even if Amazon remains a big part of your business as an indie writer, you can diversify your profits and readership by looking beyond Amazon.   What can't Amazon do for your readers? You can engage with your readers directly through your newsletter and social media. That's why I try to post at least once a day and respond to comments when possible. You can find ways to provide special content for loyal readers, which I do personally in the form of free short stories, discounts, Coupon of the Week (which we always talk about every week). Giveaways, et cetera provide something that Amazon can't or won't. For example, direct sales platforms like my Payhip store can provide DRM free ebook files, multiple file formats with each purchase, and special bonus content for readers buying direct and so forth. If you buy a book off My Payhip store, you can download the epub file and a PDF file, which you can't do from Amazon anymore.   On a related note, give people who don't want to buy from Amazon a place to buy your books, whether that be other ebook vendors or your own direct sales page (or ideally both). I should mention that personally of my (soon to be) 160 books, only 14% of them are currently on Kindle Unlimited (which means Amazon exclusivity), which is a fortunate position I'm able to be in because Kindle Unlimited is also a big part of the market. I'm able to essentially play in both worlds where I have the majority of my series available wide (and available on my Payhip store with files and the other things we were talking about), while also providing some books for Kindle Unlimited readers, which also is a big part of the pool. I'm fortunate enough to be able to play in both worlds there and continue to do that.   To sum up, Barnes and Noble recovered by focusing on what it does best and finding the people who respond best to that. As a writer, I think your main focus should be on putting out new books and targeting your advertising is the best way to make that approach work for you. If you have a long series, it might be a good idea to make the first book free and advertise that if you want to connect more with your readers, giving away short stories is a good way to do that, especially in your newsletter. So to sum up, perhaps the best way forward for all writers is to remain flexible and to double down on your core competencies and core strengths.   So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com, often with transcripts. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

For this episode of Season 4, I had the pleasure of interviewing fantasy, science fiction, and LitRPG author David R. Packer. We had a great time chatting about his writing, how he got started in Tao Wong's System Apocalypse Universe, and his love of telling stories. We had a terrific time chatting about his stories, characters, and inspirations for his craft. Make sure to check out his book and social links in the space below and as always please don't forget to subscribe to our Youtube Channel! Author Amazon Profile Page: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=David+R.+Packer&i=audible&ref=dp_byline_sr_audible_2 Starlit Publishing Page: https://starlitpublishing.com/collections/david-r-packer?srsltid=AfmBOoophMjuxR067ujrMP5gq3Br9plvcwIUvKB62xNkj5inTDmT11dD Author's Website: https://boxwrestlefence.com/ Podcast Channel Links: Patreon: patreon.com/TFSFP Website: https://thefantasyandscififanaticspod.com/ Youtube Channel Subscription: https://youtube.com/@thefantasyandsci-fifanatic2328 Rss.com: https://media.rss.com/thefantasyandsci-fifanaticspodcast/feed.xml Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2aCCUhora9GdLAduLaaqiu?si=cl-8VWgaSrOGDwJg-cKONQ Discord Server: https://discord.gg/zd6mj2rQ Facebook Group join link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/402724958101648/?ref=share

For this episode of Season 4 I had the pleasure of interviewing LitRPG author Jason J. Willis. We had a terrific chat about his experiences writing in Tao Wong's System Apocalypse universe, what it is like having a co-author, and writing interesting characters within a genre. Make sure you check out Jason's books through his social links below and make sure to check out his co-authored book with Tao Wong-Head of the Class! This one is on my 2025 Reading List so make sure to check out that two part video and don't forget to subscribe to our Youtube Channel! Author Amazon Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0CWPKZDG6 Publisher's Website: https://starlitpublishing.com/collections/jason-j-willis Author Goodreads Page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/34106703.Jason_J_Willis Podcast Channel Links: Patreon: patreon.com/TFSFP Website: https://thefantasyandscififanaticspod.com/ Youtube Channel Subscription: https://youtube.com/@thefantasyandsci-fifanatic2328 Rss.com: https://media.rss.com/thefantasyandsci-fifanaticspodcast/feed.xml Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2aCCUhora9GdLAduLaaqiu?si=cl-8VWgaSrOGDwJg-cKONQ Discord Server: https://discord.gg/zd6mj2rQ Facebook Group join link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/402724958101648/?ref=share

We had a lot of technical difficulties at the beginning. This week it is just Kr0nus and Blue, this week we talk about SF Beer Week, Kendrick vs Drake, Dirty Stu, Kendricks halftime show, Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman, Solo Leveling, LitRPG books, and more! Come follow us: http://www.beenhadproductions.com/bthanbti SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/bthanbtiI Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BthanBTI/ Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/bthanbti Twitter: @BthanBTI iTunes: https://itun.es/i6SJ6Pw YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BlackerThanBlackTimesInfinity Rescue + Residence https://www.rescueresidence.org/ Donate: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=34F4G4ZXQL8FA

Time till floor collapse: 56 minutes... Just kidding!! Come crawl into the world of 'Dungeon Crawler Carl', a thrilling and humorous LitRPG novel that blends adventure, humor, and a dash of gaming culture. Join us as we explore the journey of an average guy who finds himself trapped in a dystopian game world filled with deadly monsters, quirky allies, and high-stakes challenges. We discuss the unique elements of the LitRPG genre, the insane plot details that keep readers hooked, and lots of Princess Donut fangirl-ing. Whether you're a fan of video games, epic fantasy, or just looking for a fun read, be sure to tune in for spoiler-filled discussions. It's a wild one. This author gets the three of us absolutely gagged and gooped.

In this special episode of Radio Labyrinth Presents: Interviews, we sit down with the one and only Jeff Hays, the voice behind the Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobook series!